Sam Adams: An African American Civil War Veteran and his New Mexican Life

Hannah Abelbeck

Photo Archivist, Palace of the Governors Photo Archives, New Mexico History Museum

This talk will dive deep into a set of photographs in Photo Archives collections which feature Samuel Adams, an African American Civil War veteran who later settled in New Mexico. The presentation will put Adams in context with his contemporaries and explore the difficulty of looking for information about minor and overlooked historical figures whose stories usually aren’t center stage.

Hannah Abelbeck is the Photo Archivist in the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives department at the New Mexico History Museum. She has a BA in English and Art History from the University of Kansas and an MA in English from Penn State University, and she’s worked with special collections archives at both universities. She researches Southwestern (especially New Mexico) photographers, documentary and vernacular photography, cultural movements, and histories of gender and sexuality. At NMHM, she is working on increasing digital access to the museum’s vast photo collections.

The lecture is available here: