The Julian P. Boyd Award is the highest award presented by the ADE. It was established in 1980 through the contribution of an anonymous donor. The award commemorates Boyd’s commitment to excellence and the breadth of his scholarly interests. First presented in 1981, the Boyd Award is now given every three years to a senior scholar in honor of a distinguished contribution to the study of American history and culture.

• 2022 – Mary-Jo Kline
• 2019 – Ann D. Gordon, editor of the Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and one of the significant historians of women, suffrage, and America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her mastery of the craft of documentary editing, service to the profession, and engagement with a wider public established a model of excellence for us, representing the best of what documentary editors aspire to.
• 2016 – Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson, in recognition of their long landmark collaboration on the monumental Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Emerson editions, which changed the landscape of Emerson studies, enriched the scholarship on Transcendentalism, and demonstrated the value of editing in an academic environment where it has not always enjoyed a high status.
• 2013 – G. Thomas Tanselle, with the highest respect for his many distinguished achievements as a scholarly editor over the course of his long career and for his understanding of the principles that should guide editors regardless of academic discipline or area of study.
• 2010 – John P. Kaminski, editor/project director of the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, has been a member of the documentary editing community for forty years, an effective and eloquent advocate for the work that editors “do,” and a tireless communicator of early American history with other scholars, journalists, secondary and grade school teachers and their students, and the world-at-large.
• 2007 – Gary E. Moulton, editor of the Journals of Lewis and Clark. A former editor of the Papers of the Chief John Ross and the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, he also compiled an abridged, single-volume edition of the journals entitled The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (2003). He also has served as treasurer of the Association for Documentary Editing.
• 2004 – Barbara B. Oberg, a professor at Princeton University and general editor of the Papers of Thomas Jefferson. A former editor of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin at Yale University, she is co-author, with Doron Ben-Atar, of Federalists Reconsidered (1998) and, with Harry S. Stout, of Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Representation of American Culture (1993). The immediate past president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, she also served as president of the Association for Documentary Editing.
• 2001 – William W. Abbott, editor emeritus of the Papers of George Washington and a founding father of the ADE, for his prodigious and excellent work in editing The Papers of George Washington, ten-volume Colonial Series (1983-1995), six-volume Confederation Series (1992-1997); and the four-volume Retirement Series (1998-1999).
• 1998 – John Y. Simon, editor of the Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, has shepherded over ten thousand documents into publication since 1967. His other publications include The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant and more than a hundred articles and essays in professional journals and published collections.
• 1995 – David R. Chesnutt, in recognition for his lifetime contribution to understanding the American past through documentary editing as teacher, mentor and scholar. He is the senior editor of The Papers of Henry Laurens and project director of the Model Editions Partnership.
• 1992 – Jo Ann Boydston, editor of the thirty-seven volume Collected Works of John Dewey and president of the ADE, 1984-85.
• 1989 – Louis R. Harlan, distinguished professor of history at the University of Maryland at College Park and co-editor of The Booker T. Washington Papers, Harlan also is a recipient of the Beveridge Award, the Bancroft Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for his biography, Booker T. Washington.
• 1986 – Fredson Bowers, Linden Kent Memorial Professor of English, Emeritus, at the University of Virginia, Bowers began his career as a scholar of Renaissance and Restoration drama, then in 1955 published an edition of Walt Whitman’s manuscripts, successfully making the transition to American literature. He later edited editions of Stephen Crane and William James, and produced many essays on the principles and procedures of editing.
• 1983 – Harold C. Syrett, for his distinguished contribution to American history and culture through his editing of The Papers of Alexander Hamilton from the project’s inception in 1955 through its completion in 1979.
• 1981 – Arthur S. Link was editor and director of the Papers of Woodrow Wilson, his crowning scholarly achievement. He also published a multi-volume biography of Woodrow Wilson, and an article on the survival of Progressivism in the 1920s that forced a historical reconsideration of that decade.