50 Fun Facts About Sam Adams

How many of Deacon Samuel Adams and Mary Fifield's twelve children lived past their third birthday?

The family were devout Puritans of the Old South Congregational Church, and Samuel carried Puritan ideas of virtue into his politics all his life.

Samuel, the Boston patriot, was a second cousin of which future US president?

When the cousin later travelled to France he had to explain that he was not Samuel, 'the famous Adams'.

Which college did Samuel Adams enter in 1736 at the age of 14?

His parents hoped the schooling would lead to the ministry; he graduated in 1740 and took a master's degree in 1743.

Samuel Adams's 1743 thesis argued it was lawful to resist whom, if the Commonwealth could not otherwise survive?

The thesis signalled that his politics, like his father's, were oriented toward colonial rights three decades before independence.

Samuel Adams is often called a brewer, but evidence suggests he actually worked as what?

The Adamses had produced malt for brewers for generations; Samuel's poor business sense eventually closed the malthouse.

Samuel Adams's father was ruined by the 1741 collapse of which Massachusetts scheme he had helped create?

Parliament dissolved the bank and its directors became personally liable; lawsuits dogged the family for years and shaped Samuel's view of British power.

Which town office did Samuel Adams perform so poorly that his accounts fell 8,000 pounds into arrears?

Failing to squeeze his neighbours boosted his popularity; opponents won a court judgment of 1,463 pounds against him in 1768 but the town meeting smoothed it over.

Which weekly newspaper did Samuel Adams and friends launch in 1748?

Its essays drew on John Locke; Adams later wrote for the Gazette under several pen names.

Under which of these pen names did Samuel Adams write essays in the Boston Gazette?

Publius belonged to the Federalist authors, Silence Dogood to a teenage Ben Franklin; Adams also signed himself Candidus.

Boston's Town Meeting, following Samuel Adams's 24 May 1764 instructions, was the first American body to declare what?

The instructions were a response to the Sugar Act; the Virginia Resolves against the Stamp Act a year later echoed his arguments.

Which Sons of Liberty precursor organised Boston's 1765 Stamp Act protests — a group Adams never joined?

On 14 August 1765 the group hanged stamp distributor Andrew Oliver in effigy from the Liberty Tree.

Samuel Adams entered the Massachusetts House in 1765, replacing which deceased Boston representative?

With Otis away at the Stamp Act Congress, Adams became the main author of the House's resolutions, which were more radical than the Congress's own.

Which wealthy young merchant joined Samuel Adams in the Massachusetts House in 1766 as his protege?

The two later fell out over Hancock's taste for finery, then reconciled in time to back the Constitution together in 1788.

What was the vote when the Massachusetts House refused in 1768 to rescind Adams's Circular Letter?

Governor Bernard dissolved the legislature in reply; the 'Glorious 92' became a rallying number for patriots.

Whose sloop, the Liberty, was seized by customs officials in Boston in June 1768, sparking a riot?

The frightened officials fled to the warship HMS Romney and then to Castle William; four regiments of redcoats followed that autumn.

After the Boston Massacre, Samuel Adams got John Adams and which lawyer to defend the British soldiers?

He wanted a fair trial to prove Boston was not ruled by a mob, then wrote essays arguing the acquitted soldiers deserved murder convictions.

In November 1772 Samuel Adams created which network so Massachusetts towns could share political news?

The trigger was Britain taking over the salaries of the governor and judges, removing the House's control of the purse.

Whose private letters urging 'an abridgement of ... English liberties' did Samuel Adams reveal in 1773?

The House petitioned the king for his recall; the same governor's refusal to let the tea ships leave set up the Tea Party months later.

The mass gathering Adams called for 29 November 1773 outgrew Faneuil Hall and moved to which building?

About 7,000 people were gathered around it on 16 December when word came that the tea ships would not be allowed to leave.

Which of the tea ships was stranded near Cape Cod and never reached Boston in December 1773?

The other three were boarded on the night of 16 December, when 342 chests went into the harbour over about three hours.

When did the claim that Adams's remark signalled the Boston Tea Party first appear in print?

Eyewitnesses said people did not leave for another ten or fifteen minutes, and that Adams actually tried to stop them because the meeting was not over.

Why was Samuel Adams's 1774 journey to the First Continental Congress personally notable?

Never fashionably dressed and short of money, he went in new clothes his friends bought for him, with his expenses paid.

Who sent Paul Revere from Boston on 18 April 1775 to warn Adams and Hancock at Lexington?

Gage's written orders never mentioned arresting the two men, but London papers had reported that the patriot leader would hang if caught.

Which two men did General Gage exclude from his pardon offer after Lexington and Concord?

Mercy Otis Warren thought singling them out only inflated their fame among Patriots.

Which act is Samuel Adams noted for at the Second Continental Congress in 1775?

Congress worked under a secrecy rule, so much of his influence was as a behind-the-scenes 'parliamentary whip'.

Jefferson called Samuel Adams the Revolution's Palinurus. In the Aeneid, who is Palinurus?

The compliment credits Adams with steering Congress toward independence; Jefferson also called him 'truly the Man of the Revolution'.

Who joined Samuel and John Adams on the committee that drafted the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780?

Voters had rejected an earlier draft in 1778; the new one set up annual elections and a separation of powers and is still in force.

Which two documents of the Revolution did Samuel Adams sign?

He was Massachusetts's man on the committee that drafted the Articles, and never attended the 1787 Philadelphia Convention.

What had happened to Adams's Purchase Street house when he came home from Congress?

Unable to repair it, he moved his family to Dedham; after the war he lived in a run-down Winter Street house confiscated from a Loyalist.

About which uprising did Samuel Adams say a man who rebels against a republic's laws 'ought to suffer death'?

He saw no contradiction with 1776: rebelling against an unrepresentative king was one thing, taking up arms against a republic of fellow citizens another.

By what margin did Massachusetts ratify the US Constitution in February 1788?

Adams had confessed that 'as I enter the Building I stumble at the Threshold'; he backed it on the proviso that amendments would follow.

Samuel Adams lost the December 1788 US House election to whom?

The newspapers cast it as old revolutionary against new constructive statesman; Adams kept pushing for the amendments that became the Bill of Rights.

Samuel Adams became acting governor of Massachusetts in 1793 on the death of which governor?

He was then elected in his own right for four one-year terms and retired in 1797, taking his cue from Washington's refusal to run again.

In which state did Republican electors cast 15 votes for Samuel Adams as Jefferson's running mate in 1796?

His cousin John won instead, with Jefferson as vice-president; Samuel was pleased when Jefferson beat John in 1800.

Which movement disorder do historians believe left Samuel Adams unable to write in his final decade?

He died at 81 in October 1803 and was buried in Boston's Granary Burying Ground; a Republican paper eulogised him as 'the Father of the American Revolution'.

Which two people founded the Boston Beer Company, maker of Samuel Adams, in 1984?

Koch put in $100,000 of his own money and raised the rest from family, friends and former Boston Consulting Group colleagues.

The first Samuel Adams Boston Lager used a family recipe named after which ancestor of the founder?

Koch was the sixth-generation, first-born son to follow the family into brewing, having previously worked at Boston Consulting Group with three Harvard degrees.

Six weeks after its 1985 launch, Samuel Adams Boston Lager was voted 'Best in America' at which event?

Ninety-three national and regional beers competed; the lager had first gone on tap at Doyle's Cafe in Jamaica Plain.

Under what ticker symbol does the Boston Beer Company trade on the New York Stock Exchange?

Public shareholders hold Class A stock; Koch owns 100% of the Class B shares that control the company. TAP belongs to Molson Coors.

What was the ABV of Samuel Adams Utopias in 2002, when it was marketed as the world's strongest beer?

It comes uncarbonated in a ceramic bottle shaped like a copper brew kettle; the 2025 edition reached 30% and is barred from sale in several states, including Alabama and Georgia.

Which hard iced tea brand did the Boston Beer Company launch in 2000?

The company later added Angry Orchard cider (2012), Truly hard seltzer (2016) and its own earlier Hardcore Cider (1997) to the portfolio.

In May 2019 the Boston Beer Company bought which Delaware craft brewery for about $300 million?

Founder Sam Calagione and his wife Mariah became the second-largest non-institutional owners of the combined company.

In 1997 Jim Koch bought the Hudepohl-Schoenling Brewery in his hometown. Which city?

The very first batches had been contract-brewed at the Pittsburgh Brewing Company; a Pennsylvania plant in Breinigsville followed in 2007.

Samuel Adams's first wife, Elizabeth Checkley, whom he married in 1749, was the daughter of whom?

Only two of their six children reached adulthood, and after her death in 1757 he remarried Elizabeth Wells in 1764 without further children.

Which learned society did Samuel Adams help found as a charter member in 1780?

He also pushed Boston to provide free public schooling even for girls, a controversial stance at the time.

Which organisation of former army officers did Adams, like Jefferson, denounce after the war?

He feared the hereditary society was 'a stride towards an hereditary military nobility'.

What was the profession of Samuel Adams Jr., who died aged 37 during the 1788 ratifying convention?

He had served in the Revolutionary War, fallen ill and never fully recovered; his death was a stunning blow to his father.

Which exiled Loyalist chief justice called Adams a devious Machiavellian with a 'cloven Foot'?

Hutchinson, Adams's political foe, took his own revenge in his History of Massachusetts.

Why did Adams lose his job at Thomas Cushing's counting house after only a few months?

His father then lent him £1,000 to go into business, half of which Adams promptly lent to a friend and never saw again.

Whose decision not to seek re-election in 1796 prompted Adams to retire as governor in 1797?

By then essential tremor had left him unable to write, and he died in Boston on 2 October 1803.