Robert Treat Paine

Home of Declaration signer and first MA attorney general, Robert Treat Paine! Tweets by the Paine Papers project at the Massachusetts Historical Society

[Massachusetts Historical Society @MHS1791]

Often remembered as one of the more dour founders, Robert Treat Paine had a high interest in dancing in his youth: https://t.co/WAXoQFSKQd #MoreFunThanYouThought @RTPaine_MHS #InternationalDanceDay

[Massachusetts Historical Society @MHS1791]

#OTD in 1763, @RTPaine_MHS writes a playful letters to his sister Eunice, one of his favorite correspondents when they were young. "By this Letter you surely learn two things, my desire to divert you & utter inability to do it." Read the whole here: https://t.co/LeLaJv55tI

[Massachusetts Historical Society @MHS1791]

Please pause and consider what a significant moment this is: John Adams complimented @RTPaine_MHS.

[Jake @ HUB History @HUBhistory]

#OnThisDay in 1756, John Adams dined with "that universal scholar, gay companion, and accomplish'd gentleman Mr. Robert Treat Pain." @RTPaine_MHS
@2ndPOTUS

https://t.co/WmCBwbcuGU

[NHPRC @NHPRC]

Congrats to the outstanding staff of the #NHPRC-funded @RTPaine_MHS Papers @MHS1791 on the near-completion of the 5-vol print and digital editions! #legalhist @NHPRC_Pub #twitterstorians #documentaryediting #VastEarlyAmerica

[J. L. Bell @Boston1775]

Everyone can explore the @RTPaine_MHS Papers thru @MHS1791’s website: https://t.co/s20nRIWcqy

[J. L. Bell @Boston1775]

At @MHS1791, president @CatherineAllgor reports that 5th & final volume of @RTPaine_MHS Papers is in proofs. First volume published 26 years ago! (Most of those decades probably spent deciphering RTP’s handwriting.) Paine’s legal papers to be digitized next.

[J. L. Bell @Boston1775]

After leaving the Congress, in 1777 @RTPaine_MHS became Massachusetts attorney general for 12 years. More active than his predecessors, he rode circuit and wrote a lot of his own paperwork & trial notes. His handwriting, never clear, suffered.

[Ondine LeBlanc @oleblanc]

More thoughts from #amproofing vol 5 of @RTPaine_MHS papers: the man wrote a good #condolence letter. I can't show 1 from vol5 yet, but here's 1 from 1776: https://t.co/IEbXPC7QRa The right balance of shared grief, respect for other's grief, & consoling prospect.

[Ondine LeBlanc @oleblanc]

Ebenezer Mattoon to @RTPaine_MHS, 18 Oct. 1808:
"the falling leaves of autumn again admonish us, that another year is terminated; and I suppose with the greater part of the world, without mending head or heart." #amproofing @MHS1791

[Ondine LeBlanc @oleblanc]

So Robert Treat Paine @MHS1791, signer of the Declaration & 1st attorney general of Mass. (post-Rev), has undergone his annual All Hallows Eve transformation to Robert Eat Brain, hungry for fresh gray matter! Some of his stranger writings on brains here: https://t.co/KCBRi4r77q

[Ondine LeBlanc @oleblanc]

@bostonbookblog @RTPaine_MHS Really @RTPaine_MHS was oddly obsessed with brains for a while in the 1750s, as in this letter to his friend Richard Cranch: "while on Earth you spent yr. Time in Robbing & plundring other peoples Brains." Hmmm, makes you wonder, right? https://t.co/6hpuQd5qYN

[Robert Treat Paine @RTPaine_MHS]

"...Manufacturing, we purge, cleanse & coin & send forth into the World, fitted to serve the grand purpose of its Creation."
https://t.co/FwnTpxHZ3c

[Robert Treat Paine @RTPaine_MHS]

Young RTP liked to write about brains: "The Gods, added he, in Compassion to the giddy Errors of Mankind, have here set up the Curious & long wanted Brain Refining Laboratory, where the Brains of such Mortals, as we can get into our possession, and find to contain Matter worth"

[Literary Boston @literary_boston]

The Robert Treat Paine/Robert Eat Brain spooky Twitter handle name change was probably the best we saw!

[Robert Treat Paine @RTPaine_MHS]

#NewProfilePic

[Robert Treat Paine @RTPaine_MHS]

@ConSource Robert Treat Paine. Underrated guy! 😁

[Revolution250 @REV250BOS]

Rev250 resource of the day — “That Spark of Liberty: Robert Treat Paine and America’s DNA,” talk by descendant Tom Paine at OId Colony History Museum @OCHM1853, Taunton, Oct 18: https://t.co/d53kBaApKt @RTPaine_MHS

[Ondine LeBlanc @oleblanc]

Word that is new to me: Yankish.
In a 1796 letter to @RTPaine_MHS, his son Charles describes a "Yankish hankering after cider." Have any other #twitterstorians come across this one in documents of this era? Is it it the Yankee version of Frankish?

[Ondine LeBlanc @oleblanc]

The charming and unexpected things you may come across when you browse the aggregated indexes of the @RTPaine_MHS Papers edition, now available at the @MHS1791 website. https://t.co/UUOpYfy3hH #AmRev #twitterstorians #andzebraloverseverywhere