Background

Randolph Greenfield Adams was born on November 7, 1892 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of John Stokes and Heloise Zelina Root Adams.

His father was a prominent lawyer and writer.

Education

After attending the Philadelphia Episcopal Academy, Adams studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received the B. A. in 1914.

The next year he studied law at his alma mater but decided to change his field of study to history.

He was a Carnegie fellow in international law at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving the Ph. D. in history from that institution in 1920.

Career

In 1915-1916 Adams served as assistant in history at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1916-1917 as a fellow in history at the University of Chicago.

On June 7, 1917, Adams enlisted in the United States Army as a private. In May 1918 he was attached to Base Hospital 20 in France with the University of Pennsylvania unit. He was commissioned second lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps on September 5, 1918, and discharged on May 5, 1919.

In 1920 he became an assistant professor of history at Trinity College (now Duke University) in North Carolina. He left this post in 1923 to become the first custodian of the William L. Clements Library of American History at the University of Michigan, where he remained until his death in Ann Arbor at the age of fifty-eight.

In both history and librarianship Adams' careers began precociously. His first historical publication was A History of the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania (1913). His doctoral dissertation was published in 1922 by Trinity College as Political Ideas of the American Revolution. He produced in 1924 a second standard work, A History of the Foreign Policy of the United States.

After becoming a librarian, Adams continued his historical scholarship and edited Selected Political Essays of James Wilson (1930).

His other activities in the historical field included membership on the editorial board of the History Book Club from 1947 to 1951 and chairmanship of the Michigan Commission on the Washington Bicentennial in 1931-1932. He served on advisory councils for the Dictionary of American History, the Writings of George Washington, and the Papers of Thomas Jefferson. In 1929 he was visiting professor of international relations at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

For the instruction of his two young sons, he wrote two books of history for children: The Gateway to American History (1927) and Pilgrims, Indians, and Patriots (1928).

After his appointment as custodian of the Clements Library, Adams' major works combined the fields of bibliography and history. Over the years he edited and wrote essays on various historical documents; in particular, the series of exhibition Bulletins issued by the Clements Library were useful and carefully prepared expositions of its holdings.

Neither trained nor experienced as a librarian, Adams was hired by William Clements, a regent of the University of Michigan, to be the first head of the rare-book library that Clements had collected, endowed with its own building, and presented to Michigan. Several well-known figures had been rejected for the post before Adams walked into the Widener Library office of George Parker Winship, the Harvard librarian. Winship was so taken with Adams' personality and erudition that he was easily able to persuade Clements to the same opinion.

Adams had been early introduced to the world of rare books by A. Edward Newton, a famous Philadelphia bibliophile who had been a close friend of his father's. Once ensconced as the head of one of the world's most important collections of Americana, Adams took up the cause of the rare-book collector by devoting himself to the preservation of documents, as opposed to the major trend in American librarianship of service to the reader. Repeatedly Adams stated that the care of rare materials should be put before the desires of readers and librarians.

Adams' many other bibliographical activities included the writing of scholarly essays, particularly his lectures as A. S. W. Rosenbach fellow in bibliography at the University of Pennsylvania, published in 1939 as Three Americanists.

He was a contributing editor from 1935 until 1950 to the Colophon and the New Colophon. From 1943 to 1950 he was coeditor of the Clements Library Quarto.

Achievements

• Adams became one of the most influential rare book librarians of his time as first director of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. He was also president in 1940-1941 of the Bibliographical Society of America, director from 1937 to 1941 of the American Historical Association's McGregor plan for putting rare books in college libraries, an adviser in 1940 on the establishment of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York. His doctoral dissertation Political Ideas of the American Revolution became a basic reference book and was revised in 1939 and again in 1958. It was also translated into Arabic. His History of the Foreign Policy of the United States was also reprinted several times. An annual Adams memorial lecture was established at the University of Michigan in 1952, continued for ten years, and then was reinstituted in 1975.

Works

More photos

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  • Political Ideas of the American Revolution: Britannic-American Contributions to the Problem of Imperial Organization, 1765 to 1775

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • PILGRIMS, INDIANS AND PATRIOTS. The Pictorial History of America from the Colonial Age to the Revolution.

    (Hardcover, no dust jacket. Leaves and heavy cloth boards ...)

  • The whys and wherefores of the William L. Clements library : a brief essay on book-collecting as a fine art,

    (Second edition. An essay about the collection in the libr...)

  • The papers of Lord George Germain;: A brief description of the Stopford-Sackville papers now in the William L. Clements library, (The William L. Clements Library - University of Michigan. Bulletin)
  • The gateway to American history,

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Howard H. Peckham: "He spurred the growth of the Library, going abroad twice to procure manuscript collections, maps, and books. As a historian he extended the scope of the Library in period and in range. He introduced to the campus and to the Midwest the concept of a rare-book library for research in which the emphasis was on the acquisition and conservation of source materials. "
  
  Clifford K. Shipton: "In our generation and circle of librarians, no one was more joyous and convivial. Few were more fertile of ideas, and no one more willing to receive ideas conflicting with his own. "
  
  Donald F. Hyde: "If one word described 'Randy, ' as he was known to his numberless friends, it was 'enthusiasm. ' "
  
  Howard H. Peckham: "The library he had endowed with his personality remains his monument as well as that of its founder. "

Connections

Adams was married to Helen Newbold Spiller.

Father:

John Stokes Adams

Mother:

Heloise Zelina Root Adams

Spouse:

Helen Newbold (Spiller) Adams

References

• Three Americanists: Henry Harrisse, Bibliographer; George Brinley, Book Collector; Thomas Jefferson, Librarian
• Shaping a library: William L. Clements as collector,