Thomas Boylston Adams

Who was Thomas Boylston Adams?

Thomas Boylston Adams was the third and youngest son of John and Abigail Adams.

Adams lived with relatives in Haverhill, Massachusetts during his father’s diplomatic missions in Europe, after Abigail Adams joined him in 1784. He graduated from Harvard University in 1790 and studied law at his family’s behest, but brother John Quincy Adams did not believe he had the skills to practice law successfully.

Adams accompanied his brother John Quincy in the Netherlands and Prussia from 1794 to 1798, serving as his secretary. In 1805, he married Ann Harrod of Haverhill and the couple produced seven children in only eleven years. They settled in Quincy, which he represented in the Massachusetts legislature in 1805-06. Adams was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1810. In 1811, he was appointed chief justice of the Circuit Court of Common Pleas for the Southern Circuit of Massachusetts. Like his brother Charles, Thomas had problems with alcoholism. He died in Quincy in 1832, deeply in debt.