The Douglass Adair Symposia Collection was donated by John Allphin Moore, Jr., Professor Emeritus of History at Cal Poly Pomona and Director of the Douglas Adair Symposia. The collection contains all the programs for the symposia, news items, minutes of planning meetings, correspondence with a wide and interesting variety of individuals, photographs, copies of the two published anthologies, business cards and two awards.

Douglass Greybill Adair was born in New York City in 1912. Adair grew up in Birmingham and Mobile, Alabama. He attended the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee and majored in English. He subsequently received his M.A. at Harvard and his Ph.D. at Yale. After teaching at Princeton he joined the faculty at the College of William and Mary in 1946 and became editor of the William and Mary Quarterly. From 1955 until his death in 1968, he was a professor of history at the Claremont Graduate School. Adair is the author of seminal essays on the late eighteenth century, many of which have been collected in Fame and Founding Fathers, an exposition of the years of America’s founding. Adair is also recognized as having definitively identified the authors of each of the anonymously written Federalist papers. The Symposia is named for the late Douglass Adair and the topics addressed are in the spirit of Professor Adair’s inquiries and studies. The widespread dissemination of these symposia and related discussions correspond to his commitment to broaden and deepen the discourse about our country, its origins, and its prospect. He married Virginia Hamilton Adair in 1936. Douglass Adair committed suicide in 1968.

2.5 Linear feet