Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
49 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 49 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
Three: of the twelve children born to Deacon Samuel Adams and Mary Fifield, only three, Samuel among them, lived past their third birthday in an age of high infant mortality.
Q 02Samuel, the Boston patriot, was a second cousin of which future US president?
John Adams
John Adams, Samuel's second cousin, was the future president; when John reached France in 1778 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
Harvard admitted Samuel Adams in 1736, when he was 14; his parents hoped the schooling would lead to the ministry, but 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 Supreme Magistrate: his 1743 master's thesis asked 'whether it be lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot be otherwise preserved', and Adams argued that it was.
Q 05Samuel Adams is often called a brewer, but evidence suggests he actually worked as what?
A maltster
A maltster: Adams inherited the family malthouse, which produced malt for Boston's brewers rather than beer; his poor business sense eventually ran it into the ground.
Q 06Samuel Adams's father was ruined by the 1741 collapse of which Massachusetts scheme he had helped create?
The Land Bank
The Land Bank, which issued paper currency backed by land, was dissolved by Parliament in 1741; its directors became personally liable, and lawsuits dogged the Adams family for years.
Q 07Which town office did Samuel Adams perform so poorly that his accounts fell 8,000 pounds into arrears?
Tax collector
Tax collector: Adams rarely pressed his neighbours for payment, a laxity that boosted his popularity but eventually left his accounts roughly 8,000 pounds in arrears.
Q 08Which weekly newspaper did Samuel Adams and friends launch in 1748?
The Independent Advertiser
The Independent Advertiser, a weekly Adams and his friends launched in 1748, ran essays steeped in John Locke's ideas of natural rights and government by consent.
Q 09Under which of these pen names did Samuel Adams write essays in the Boston Gazette?
Vindex
Vindex was among Samuel Adams's Boston Gazette pen names, alongside Candidus and Valerius Poplicola; Publius belonged to the Federalist authors and Silence Dogood to a teenage Ben Franklin.
Q 10What did Boston's Town Meeting declare on 24 May 1764, following Samuel Adams's written instructions?
That Parliament could not constitutionally tax the colonists
That Parliament could not constitutionally tax the colonists: the instructions, answering the Sugar Act, argued that taxes imposed without the colonists' consent violated their rights as British subjects.
Q 11Which Sons of Liberty precursor organised Boston's 1765 Stamp Act protests — a group Adams never joined?
The Loyal Nine
The Loyal Nine, a group of Boston shopkeepers and artisans, organised the 14 August 1765 protest that hanged stamp distributor Andrew Oliver in effigy from a great elm in Boston's South End; Adams was not a member.
Q 12Samuel Adams entered the Massachusetts House in 1765, replacing which deceased Boston representative?
Oxenbridge Thacher
Oxenbridge Thacher, the Boston lawyer who had argued the writs of assistance case, died in July 1765; Adams was elected to his seat that September and soon drafted the House's anti-Stamp Act resolutions.
Q 13Which wealthy young merchant joined Samuel Adams in the Massachusetts House in 1766 as his protege?
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
Nearly a century later, in a biography by his great-grandson: William V. Wells's 1865 life of Adams first printed the signal story; eyewitnesses said people lingered ten or fifteen minutes and Adams tried to keep the meeting going.
Q 22Why was Samuel Adams's 1774 journey to the First Continental Congress personally notable?
He had never before left Massachusetts
He had never before left Massachusetts: Adams set out for Philadelphia in August 1774 in new clothes his friends had bought him, his expenses paid, on his first trip beyond his home province.
Q 23Who sent Paul Revere from Boston on 18 April 1775 to warn the leaders at Lexington?
John Hancock
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
92 to 17: the House voted by that margin on 30 June 1768 not to rescind the Circular Letter, so Governor Bernard dissolved it; the 'Glorious 92' became a patriot rallying number.
Q 15Which sloop's seizure by customs officials in Boston in June 1768 sparked a riot?
The Liberty
The Liberty, a merchant sloop accused of landing Madeira wine without paying duty, was seized on 10 June 1768; a crowd then beat the customs officers, who fled to the warship Romney.
Q 16Which Boston lawyer helped defend the British soldiers tried for the Boston Massacre?
Josiah Quincy
Josiah Quincy, a young patriot lawyer, joined the soldiers' defence despite his father's objections; Samuel Adams wanted the trial to show Boston was not ruled by a mob, then wrote essays arguing the acquitted men deserved conviction.
Q 17In November 1772 Samuel Adams created which network so Massachusetts towns could share political news?
Committees of correspondence
Committees of correspondence: the Boston committee Adams formed in November 1772, after the Crown took over paying the governor and judges, circulated a statement of colonial rights and invited every town to reply.
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
The Old South Meeting House took the overflow crowd; on 16 December thousands were packed there when word came that the governor would not let the tea ships leave.
Q 20Which of the tea ships was stranded near Cape Cod and never reached Boston in December 1773?
The William
The William ran aground off Cape Cod on 10 December 1773; the remaining tea ships were boarded on 16 December, when 342 chests went into the harbour over the course of the evening.
Joseph Warren
Joseph Warren, the Boston physician who led the patriots after Adams left for Congress, dispatched Revere; Gage's written orders never mentioned arresting the two leaders, though London papers had reported that Adams would hang if caught.
Q 24At whose Lexington parsonage was Samuel Adams staying when Paul Revere arrived on 18 April 1775?
Jonas Clarke
Jonas Clarke, Lexington's minister, was hosting Adams and a fellow patriot leader at his parsonage when Revere rode in; the pair left for Woburn before the British column reached the town.
Q 25Samuel Adams served in the Continental Congress from 1774 until which year?
1781
1781: Adams sat in the Continental Congress from its first session in 1774 until 1781, when he went home to Massachusetts for good and turned to state politics.
Q 26Jefferson called Samuel Adams the Revolution's Palinurus, a figure who was what in Virgil's Aeneid?
Aeneas's helmsman
Aeneas's helmsman: Palinurus steered Aeneas's fleet from Troy until he fell overboard off Italy, so the compliment credits Adams with steering Congress toward independence; Jefferson also called him 'truly the Man of the Revolution'.
Q 27Who joined the two Adams cousins on the subcommittee that drafted the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780?
James Bowdoin
James Bowdoin, president of the 1779-80 convention, sat with the two Adamses on the drafting subcommittee; voters had rejected an earlier draft in 1778, and the 1780 text set up annual elections and a separation of powers.
Q 28Which two documents of the Revolution did Samuel Adams sign?
The Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation
The Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation: Adams signed both, having sat on the committee that drafted the Articles; he did not attend the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, so the Constitution lacks his name.
Q 29About which uprising did Samuel Adams say a man who rebels against a republic's laws 'ought to suffer death'?
Shays' Rebellion
Shays' Rebellion, the 1786-87 rising of indebted western Massachusetts farmers, drew the remark; Adams saw no contradiction with 1776, since rebelling against an unrepresentative king differed from taking up arms against a republic of fellow citizens.
Q 30By what margin did Massachusetts ratify the US Constitution in February 1788?
187 to 168
187 to 168: Massachusetts ratified on 6 February 1788 by that narrow vote; Adams, who had confessed 'as I enter the Building I stumble at the Threshold', backed it on the proviso that amendments would follow.