Here we are at the very outset of the year in which America celebrates its 250th birthday on July 4th. There’s a man who played a pivotal role in that birthday, but most Americans seem unaware of his immense contributions.

Samuel Adams is perhaps the most overlooked of our Founding Fathers. Yet he played a vital role in getting the whole ball rolling for American independence. Thomas Jefferson called him the “patriarch of our liberty.”

Many today only know him as some sort of beer guy. Even the image used to promote this adult beverage is not necessarily the picture of the real Samuel Adams. 

Boston, the city founded by the Puritans as “a city upon a hill,” in 1630, became the epicenter of resistance to what they saw as unlawful British tyranny in the 1760s and 1770s. Samuel Adams had a lot to do with that.

Author Stacy Schiff, who wrote a wonderful biography on Samuel Adams in 2022, entitled, The Revolutionary,” called Adams “The Most Essential Founding Father.” I agree. For the Providence Forum, I made a short video walking around Boston in the footsteps of Samuel Adams.

 Born in Boston in 1722, Adams died in Boston in 1803. He graduated twice from Harvard, having written a master’s thesis........

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