CHARLES ADAMS was born on 29 May 1770, the second son of John and Abigail Smith Adams.

At the age of nine he traveled with his father and older brother, John Quincy, to Europe during his father’s second trip to France and studied briefly in Passy, Amsterdam, and Leyden. He soon became homesick however, and in December 1781, Charles returned to America unaccompanied by other family members.

Charles entered Harvard College in August 1785. His years there were troubled ones as he got involved with a campus disturbance, and began to drink often. As he approached graduation from Harvard in 1789, John Adams set Charles up in New York to study law and establish his practice under the supervision of his father as the Vice President joined the newly formed federal government.

The change proved beneficial to Charles and his first few years after college went well. He focused on his studies, and after passing the bar in 1792, Charles began a promising looking legal career in an office in Hanover Square in New York.

Charles Adams was known for possessing a very amiable and likeable personality, which likely made an impression on his sister-in-law, Sarah (Sally) Smith, sister to Nabby’s husband, William Stephens Smith, with whom he began a courtship. Despite protestations and warnings from his parents on the perils of early marriage, they acquiesced, and twenty-five-year old Charles married Sally in New York City on 29 August 1795, with his sister Nabby perhaps the only Adams family member present. Moving to 91 Front Street in November, his life seemed to be settled and his business good, and his parents spoke approvingly of his prospects and his choice of a wife. He had two daughters, Susanna Boylston and Abigail Louisa Smith Adams, born in 1796 and 1798 respectively.

The turn around in Charles’s life did not last, however, and the troubles he had experienced during his college years came back to haunt him. He squandered four thousand dollars his brother, John Quincy, had entrusted to him in land speculation and then dodged numerous letters from John Quincy who was serving as a diplomat in Europe. In the spring of 1800, Charles and Sally moved to 30 Broad Street as Charles’s illness intensified and as the months past the hope of recovery waned. Charles Adams died on 30 November 1800.