Saltonstall as "Adams Lite": Tastes Great, Less Filling

Mr. [John Quincy] Adams is now the rising sun, and of course finds many idolaters. You can hardly conceive the strange appearance he makes--so cold--so unbending rigid muscles amidst such smiles, such good humor, gaiety--and among his own guests too. It seems a miracle that he has ever been chosen President of the U. States. Is it an invincible proof of his eminent merit, or the result of a singular concurrence of fortunate circumstances? Mrs. A. is the very antipode--if you will allow the term to be applied to a lady....And I fear that she has a Courtier's hart [sic]--or like him is heartless.

(Letter from Leverett Saltonstall to his wife Mary, 24 Feb. 1825)

This little teaser is just my way of introducing the Saltonstall family papers slip file project, another grant-funded paper-to-digital conversion modeled on the Adams family catalog. We here at the Massachusetts Historical Society have come to call the Saltonstall slip file "Adams Lite" because it is both much smaller (only 3,000 slips) and much more straightforward than its unwieldy counterpart. Both catalogs consist of a series of paper slips describing individual documents: author, recipient, date, place, length, etc. But unlike Adams, this slip file describes papers in a single collection at the MHS: the Saltonstall family papers, Ms. N-2232. The entire data set fits in a single xml file, and all of the information has been entered, controlled, and verified by one person. And lastly, because publication of the Saltonstall papers was completed years ago, this database requires only one static interface--basically a searchable item-level collection guide. The Adams Papers Editorial Project, on the other hand, is ongoing, so that database requires two interfaces: one static, for public use; the other dynamic, to be edited by Adams Papers staff.

The Saltonstall database fulfills a requirement of the original Adams slip file grant, awarded in the fall of 2008, which specified that that project would serve as a prototype for similar projects. The Saltonstall conversion has been in the works since the beginning of 2010, and many MHS staff members have contributed to the project. Laura Lowell processed the Saltonstall family collection, and our digital team of Nancy Heywood, Laura Wulf, and Peter Steinberg have digitized, transcribed, and marked up many individual items for presentation on the web. I was responsible for building the database, using the Adams slip file as a model.

Mary Claffey's work on the Adams slip file laid most of the groundwork for me. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I literally copied and pasted her schema and revised her tags to suit the needs of the Saltonstall family papers, scaling it down by deleting unnecessary elements and adding or repurposing others. Our web developer, Bill Beck, is designing an attractive and user-friendly interface, also modeled on the Adams slip file, and Laura Lowell's collection guide to the Saltonstall family papers will link to the database. It was a lot of fun to work with so many other members of the department; everyone brought their own strengths to the project.

The Saltonstall family, like the Adams family, is chock full of prominent and interesting people, spanning several generations. Leverett, Sr. (quoted above) was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the Massachusetts Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives, and he served as the first mayor of Salem, Mass. His wife, Mary Elizabeth (Sanders) Saltonstall, was the daughter of Thomas Sanders, a well-known Salem merchant. Leverett's great-grandson, also named Leverett, was the governor of Massachusetts during World War II and a U.S. senator for over 20 years.

Keep an eye on the MHS website for further information about both projects.

I Killed John Quincy Adams, or, I was only doing my job

In September 2010, while performing encoding level 2 tasks on reel 33 (covering the years 1846-1851) I killed John Quincy Adams. I was only doing my job! His passing was solemnly marked with a beer after work. We remember JQA in part for his voluminous diaries and correspondence; his poetry; and his service to the United States. This post will look at some milestones and metrics including JQA's first letters to his parents and wife and the last letters he sent and received. Please keep in mind it relates only to those items present in the Adams Control File; and some of the numbers might change a bit as we clean up the data.

John Quincy Adams was born on 11 July 1767. Today, 23 February, is the anniversary of his death, 163 years ago in 1848.

The first letter he wrote held in the Adams Family Papers is to his cousin Elizabeth Cranch (Mrs. Jacob P. Norton), circa 1773.

The first letter to his father, John Adams, dates to 13 October 1774. The first letter to his mother Abigail Adams was written from Paris on 12 April 1778. The first letter JQA sent to his future wife Louisa Catherine Johnson (LCA) was from The Hague on 2 June 1796. In all, the MHS has (or knows about) 619 letters from JQA to LCA; and there were 451 the other way, from LCA to JQA.

The first letter JQA received was from his father, written from Philadelphia on 18 April 1776. The first letter JQA received from his mother was written from Braintree on 21 January 1781. The first letter JQA received from Louisa Catherine Johnson was from London, dated 4 July 1796: America's 20th birthday. In all, JQA received 18,475 letters.

His last dated poem was attributed to ca. 21 February 1848 as is titled "In days of yore the Poets pen ...." This poem was eventually published in Poems (New York, 1848, p. 108) under title of "Written in an Album." Indeed, his last dated documents seemed to have all been poetry.

The last letter he received whilst alive was a two page letter on 13 February 1848, from Willis Baldwin of Monroe Co., N. Y. JQA did receive one letter following his death, a four pager dated 29 February 1848 from Boston, co-authored by Edward Brooks and Dr. John Bigelow.

The last letters he is known to have sent were on 4 and 6 February 1848. On 4 February he sent a 1 page letter to Alexander Baring, the Lord Ashburton, from Washington; this is a letterbook copy. On 6 February, he sent a 1 page letter to Julia Raymond which included the poem "Fair Lady! when at thy request These fingers trace my name..."

The original slip files were scanned onto 42 "reels." JQA's attribute "adams-john-quincy1767" appears as an author, recipient or in the title field 47,581 times in 40 of the reels. He does not appear to be in reels 37 (the year 1863) and 40 (the years 1867-1870). This averages out to 1189.525 times his attribute appears per reel in one of the aforementioned fields.

JQA's initials - which can appear nearly anywhere, any number of times in a single record - appears 57,949 times in all 42 reels, or an average of 1379.7380952380952380952380952381 times per reel.