Peter Drummey, Chief Historian & Stephen T. Riley Librarian

Peter Drummey is responsible for library outreach 和 exhibitions at the MHS. Over the course of 35 years, Drummey has assisted more than 50,000 researchers who have visited the MHS 和 a far larger number from a distance. He has prepared exhibitions, transcribed historical documents, 和 written manuscript collection guides 和 subject surveys, including Collecting History, a guide to l和mark documents 和 artifacts in the Society’s collections. In addition, he has contributed book reviews 和 bibliographic essays to professional 和 historical journals.

Drummey has served as a technical adviser for documentary films 和 television programs with historical themes, including the HBO miniseries, John Adams; 和 as a commentator for BBC, c - span, 美国公共电视台, 和 commercial cable television programs on Charles Dickens in America, Thomas Jefferson, historian Henry Adams, the end of slavery in Massachusetts, the Boston Irish, 和, most recently, the Gettysburg Address.

He has been active as an advisor 和 member of national, 区域, 和 local archival 和 historical organizations, including friends of libraries groups. A Boston resident with professional knowledge of library preservation, he serves as a board member of the Associates of the Boston Public 图书馆, a nonprofit corporation formed to raise private funds to conserve the immense research collection of that library.

A native of Duxbury, Mass., Drummey attended college 和 graduate school at Columbia University in New York City. After graduating from the program to train rare book librarians 和 archivists in the School of 图书馆 Service at Columbia, he returned to Massachusetts, where he was the curator of manuscripts at the New Engl和 Historic Genealogical Society before joining the staff of the MHS in 1978. Drummey’s personal historical interests center on the era of the First World War, especially the social 和 technological impact of the war.