August 4, 2025 by David Mehegan
A stirring tale of Founding Fathers comes to Hingham Friday night, September 12, in the annual Harold and Avis Goldstein Lecture, sponsored by the Hingham Public Library and held at Derby Academy’s Larson Hall.
The Library is honored to welcome Harvard historian emerita Jane Kamensky, President and CEO of Monticello and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, who will speak on the late-in-life bond between Jefferson and John Adams in “The Art of Civic Friendship or, What Can We Learn from Jefferson and Adams?”
The lecture will consider the remarkable post-presidential relationship of two allies in the quest for independence who became bitter adversaries in the presidential campaigns of 1796 and 1800. Estranged for years, in old age they reconciled with a correspondence on philosophy, politics, religion, and the welfare of the nation until their deaths on the same day, July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Totaling 158 letters between 1812 and 1826, the Jefferson-Adams correspondence is a much-needed demonstration of how old controversies can fade and patriots can bury the bitterest hatchets out of concern for the great cause of their country.
Former Director of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Jane Kamensky gave a memorable lecture in the Goldstein series in 2018 about colonial painter John Singleton Copley, based on her book, Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley.
The Goldstein Lecture is made possible by the generosity of Hingham resident Avis Goldstein through the Harold and Avis Goldstein Trust. Derby Academy, at 56 Burditt Avenue, near Hingham Square, once again has generously made its excellent theater available for the Library and community.
Tickets for the lecture, at $15 each, go on sale August 18 at www.hinghamlibrary.org or in person at the Library, 66 Leavitt Street. Preceded by complimentary wine, beer and hors d’oeuvres from 6-7 p.m., the lecture begins promptly at 7 p.m.