Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology

Samuel P. McAdoo is the Archivist at the Haffenreffer, managing its extensive manuscript and photographic collections. He received his BA in History from Western New England University in 2015 (after an ill-fated false start in engineering), with research interests in late Tsarist and early Soviet Russia, the history of religion, and the history of political and ideological movements. While finishing his undergraduate studies he was introduced to archival and library work through a family friend, and found it an ideal balance between academic theories of arrangement and "aboutness," and practical matters of storage and preservation. While working full-time in manufacturing, he pursued an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons University (graduating 2018), and gained experience in archives as diverse as those of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut and Colt's Manufacturing Company. 

 

Samuel's most recent position prior to starting with the Haffenreffer in 2024 was with the Sisters of the Holy Union in Fall River, MA, where he (as the order's only professional lay archivist) fully processed congregational archives dating from the 1880s to the present, and managed the negotiation and physical transfer of the collections to Santa Clara University in California. These years with the Holy Union provided him with valuable experience in the handling of culturally sensitive items, the triage and prioritization of unprocessed materials, and the finer points of negotiation with the Vatican. Samuel enjoys a well-organized collection almost as much as he does the opportunity to learn something new about the world and its peoples, which the Haffenreffer archives provide him practically every day.