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Independence Day Weekend 2008
at the
Adams National Historical Park
Independence Day is a special time at the Adams National Historical Park. For the Park’s visitors and staff the day marks not only our nation’s birthday, but also the dramatic closing of the first chapter of the Adams family saga with John Adams’ extraordinary death on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This year the commemoration began early in the morning when the first trolley from the Visitor Center brought a full load of visitors, a number large enough to require the staff at the Old House to begin two tours at once. For the rest of the day, tours were doubled, and the Old House never had fewer than four tours in the house at any time. By the end of the weekend, more than one thousand visitors had toured each of the three houses and many more had stopped by the Visitor Center or strolled the grounds. The trolley constantly ran at capacity bringing not only those visitors who wished to tour the houses and grounds of the park, but also those wishing to participate in the programs offered.
On the day of the 4th of July, the popular Pen and Parchment program, a dramatic re-enactment of the Second Continental Congress sessions hammering out the new Declaration of Independence was offered twice, once at noon and again at 3PM. Staffed by park rangers in period costume, professional re-enactors, and the public, each performance, in the Carriage House’s main carriage area, was standing room only. At the conclusion of each performance, members of the audience read aloud the full text of the Declaration. Many had never heard the stirring document’s words read before and were visibly moved by the experience. At the end of each program, participants and guests were each given a reproduction of the original document tied with a scarlet ribbon.
That evening, out-of-doors, under a soaring, white canvas tent, the Park presented Jefferson and Adams: A Stage Play, by Howard Ginsburg, starring Bill Barker as Thomas Jefferson, Sam Goodyear as John Adams, and Abigail Schumann as Abigail Adams. The three are nationally known for the production, which has been done on both stage and radio, and which is available on DVD. By examining the correspondence between the three, the audience is led not only to understand the position of the Adams’ and Jefferson in the drama of the times, but also to feel their emotional reactions. The capacity audience was transported to another time and place and came away with a deeper appreciation of the complexities of what some mistake as a simpler cultural era.
On the 5th of July, the Pen and Parchment program was packed up and taken to Boston. There it was performed at 11 AM and 2PM at the Old State House. In Boston, while unpacking in the courtyard between the Boston Historical Park’s Visitor Center and the Old State House, the players found themselves in a swirl of other re-enactors representing fife and drum militia companies and Redcoats drilling for battle. Later during the Congress, the barking of orders and the rat-a-tat tat of drums could easily be heard from the street as the delegates within pondered the issues of independence. The Spirit of ’76 was alive in the chamber.
While the play and programs are an important contribution to the nation’s collective conscience and culture, the history, houses, and artifacts of the Adams National Historical Park still form the foundation of the Adams’ family’s endowment to the people of the United States. During the Independence Day weekend, these assets quietly but forcefully brought the Adams legacy of love of country, dedication to duty, and deepest patriotism to well over a thousand Americans and to travelers from other lands.
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