50 free Sam Adams trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
43 free Sam Adams trivia questions with answers. Sam Adams trivia covers two things people search for at once: the Boston revolutionary and the lager that borrowed his name. The first part follows Samuel Adams from Boston Latin School and Harvard through the malthouse he ran into the ground, the tax-collector job he was terrible at, the Sugar Act instructions that made Boston the first body in America to reject Parliament's right to tax, the Circular Letter, the Boston Massacre trials, the Tea Party meeting at Old South and the escape from Lexington in April 1775, then on to Congress, the Massachusetts Constitution, Shays' Rebellion and his years as governor. The second part is the Boston Beer Company: Jim Koch's great-great-grandfather's recipe, the Best Beer in America vote in 1985, the ticker symbol, the ceramic-kettle Utopias that a handful of states will not allow, Twisted Tea, Truly and the Dogfish Head deal. Easy questions open each half; the later ones will test a Revolutionary War buff and a beer nerd alike. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question shows its citation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many of Deacon Samuel Adams and Mary Fifield's twelve children lived past their third birthday?
Three
The family were devout Puritans of the Old South Congregational Church, and Samuel carried Puritan ideas of virtue into his politics all his life.
Q 02Samuel, the Boston patriot, was a second cousin of which future US president?
John Adams
When the cousin later travelled to France he had to explain that he was not Samuel, 'the famous Adams'.
Q 03Which college did Samuel Adams enter in 1736 at the age of 14?
Harvard
His parents hoped the schooling would lead to the ministry; he graduated in 1740 and took a master's degree in 1743.
Q 04Samuel Adams's 1743 thesis argued it was lawful to resist whom, if the Commonwealth could not otherwise survive?
The Supreme Magistrate
The thesis signalled that his politics, like his father's, were oriented toward colonial rights three decades before independence.
Q 05Samuel Adams is often called a brewer, but evidence suggests he actually worked as what?
A maltster
The Adamses had produced malt for brewers for generations; Samuel's poor business sense eventually closed the malthouse.
Q 06Samuel Adams's father was ruined by the 1741 collapse of which Massachusetts scheme he had helped create?
The Land Bank
Parliament dissolved the bank and its directors became personally liable; lawsuits dogged the family for years and shaped Samuel's view of British power.
Q 07Which town office did Samuel Adams perform so poorly that his accounts fell 8,000 pounds into arrears?
Tax collector
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.
Q 08Which weekly newspaper did Samuel Adams and friends launch in 1748?
The Independent Advertiser
Its essays drew on John Locke; Adams later wrote for the Gazette under several pen names.
Q 09Under which of these pen names did Samuel Adams write essays in the Boston Gazette?
Vindex
Publius belonged to the Federalist authors, Silence Dogood to a teenage Ben Franklin; Adams also signed himself Candidus.
Q 10Boston's Town Meeting, following Samuel Adams's 24 May 1764 instructions, was the first American body to declare what?
That Parliament could not constitutionally tax the colonists
The instructions were a response to the Sugar Act; the Virginia Resolves against the Stamp Act a year later echoed his arguments.
Q 11Which Sons of Liberty precursor organised Boston's 1765 Stamp Act protests — a group Adams never joined?
The Loyal Nine
On 14 August 1765 the group hanged stamp distributor Andrew Oliver in effigy from the Liberty Tree.
Q 12Samuel Adams entered the Massachusetts House in 1765, replacing which deceased Boston representative?
Oxenbridge Thacher
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.
Q 13Which wealthy young merchant joined Samuel Adams in the Massachusetts House in 1766 as his protege?
John Hancock
Q 21When did the claim that Adams's remark signalled the Boston Tea Party first appear in print?
Nearly a century later, in a biography by his great-grandson
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.
Q 22Why was Samuel Adams's 1774 journey to the First Continental Congress personally notable?
He had never before left Massachusetts
Never fashionably dressed and short of money, he went in new clothes his friends bought for him, with his expenses paid.
Q 23Who sent Paul Revere from Boston on 18 April 1775 to warn Adams and Hancock at Lexington?
The two later fell out over Hancock's taste for finery, then reconciled in time to back the Constitution together in 1788.
Q 14What was the vote when the Massachusetts House refused in 1768 to rescind Adams's Circular Letter?
92 to 17
Governor Bernard dissolved the legislature in reply; the 'Glorious 92' became a rallying number for patriots.
Q 15Whose sloop, the Liberty, was seized by customs officials in Boston in June 1768, sparking a riot?
John Hancock's
The frightened officials fled to the warship HMS Romney and then to Castle William; four regiments of redcoats followed that autumn.
Q 16After the Boston Massacre, Samuel Adams got John Adams and which lawyer to defend the British soldiers?
Josiah Quincy
He wanted a fair trial to prove Boston was not ruled by a mob, then wrote essays arguing the acquitted soldiers deserved murder convictions.
Q 17In November 1772 Samuel Adams created which network so Massachusetts towns could share political news?
Committees of correspondence
The trigger was Britain taking over the salaries of the governor and judges, removing the House's control of the purse.
Q 18Whose private letters urging 'an abridgement of ... English liberties' did Samuel Adams reveal in 1773?
Thomas Hutchinson
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.
Q 19The mass gathering Adams called for 29 November 1773 outgrew Faneuil Hall and moved to which building?
The Old South Meeting House
About 7,000 people were gathered around it on 16 December when word came that the tea ships would not be allowed to leave.
Q 20Which of the tea ships was stranded near Cape Cod and never reached Boston in December 1773?
The William
The other three were boarded on the night of 16 December, when 342 chests went into the harbour over about three hours.
Joseph Warren
Gage's written orders never mentioned arresting the two men, but London papers had reported that the patriot leader would hang if caught.
Q 24Which two men did General Gage exclude from his pardon offer after Lexington and Concord?
Adams and John Hancock
Mercy Otis Warren thought singling them out only inflated their fame among Patriots.
Q 25Which act is Samuel Adams noted for at the Second Continental Congress in 1775?
Nominating George Washington as commander in chief
Congress worked under a secrecy rule, so much of his influence was as a behind-the-scenes 'parliamentary whip'.
Q 26Jefferson called Samuel Adams the Revolution's Palinurus. In the Aeneid, who is Palinurus?
Aeneas's helmsman
The compliment credits Adams with steering Congress toward independence; Jefferson also called him 'truly the Man of the Revolution'.
Q 27Who joined Samuel and John Adams on the committee that drafted the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780?
James Bowdoin
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.
Q 28Which two documents of the Revolution did Samuel Adams sign?
The Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation
He was Massachusetts's man on the committee that drafted the Articles, and never attended the 1787 Philadelphia Convention.
Q 29What had happened to Adams's Purchase Street house when he came home from Congress?
It had been wrecked, robbed and defaced with insults
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.
Q 30About which uprising did Samuel Adams say a man who rebels against a republic's laws 'ought to suffer death'?
Shays' Rebellion
He saw no contradiction with 1776: rebelling against an unrepresentative king was one thing, taking up arms against a republic of fellow citizens another.