Tufts Family Collection

Charles Tufts (1781-1876) donated the land on which Tufts College was founded in 1852. He was the son of Daniel and Abigail Tufts (also a Tufts descendent) and a direct descendent of Peter Tufts, an early colonist who settled in Malden in 1638.

Charles Tufts, a member of the First Universalist Church in Charlestown, donated the land on which the Universalist college, Tufts College, was founded in 1852. His donation of twenty acres was then valued at $20,000 and was located on one of the highest hills in the Boston area, called Walnut Hill (originally Walnut Tree Hill). The land was given to the Universalist Church on the condition that it be used for a college. With subsequent gifts and his estate, his donations of land to the college totaled more than 100 acres.

Charles Tufts was born on the north side of Broadway opposite the Powder House in Somerville (originally part of Charlestown, then Medford, now Somerville). Daniel Tufts (1753-1838), Charles’s father, was the son of Nathaniel Tufts (1724-1771), who in turn was son of Peter Tufts (1697-1776), the third son of John Tufts (1665-1728). Daniel was a farmer and brickmaker and possibly engaged in slaughtering and tanning. Charles Tufts also worked in farming and brick manufacturing. He eventually owned substantial amounts of land in Medford and Somerville. He married Hannah Robinson (1795-1873) in 1821; the two had no children. Upon his marriage in 1821, Charles and Hannah Tufts moved to a house which they built at 141 Washington Street in Somerville. Now razed, the stones from the front steps of the house were moved to the campus and as of 1999 are located along the pathway leading from Professors Row to Tisch Library.

Jay Franklin Tufts (1885 – 1984) was the son of John William Tufts (1854 – 1935) and Emma Florence Tufts (1856 – 1943). He was born in Maineville, Ohio and married Ora Lind Anderson of Conneaut, Ohio on July 8th 1912. Jay Tufts opened a jewelry store with his father in Loveland, Ohio and had one child, Jane Elizabeth Tufts . In 1963 Tufts self-published Tufts Family History : a true account and history of our Tufts families – from and before – 1638-1963. He donated the source materials for the book to Tufts in several shipments from 1981 to 1983. He died in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1984.

Herbert Freedman Adams (1924 – 2003) was a New England genealogist who founded the Tufts Kinsmen Association, a group of people interested in Tufts heritage. He was born in Massachusetts in 1924 and was a skilled mechanic/repairman before entering the US Army as a private in 1943 where he served in the Engineer Corp. After leaving the military in 1946, he became a professional tax assessor and in 1953, Adams began specializing in land research for property surveys. Related to the Tufts family by marriage, and an amateur genealogist, Adams published The Compendium of Tufts Kinsmen: a substitutive genealogy in 1975 and Adams of Massachusetts: Herbert Freeman Adams collection in 1983. He founded the Tufts Kinsmen Association in 1974. The Association published a quarterly newsletter titled The Tufts Kinsmen. Tufts Kinsmen Association in the mid-1980s. A revised version of his first book was published in 2010 as Tufts Kinsmen. He died in 2003 and is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in Mattapan, MA.