Adams, Charles F.

Born: 1807-08-18 Boston, Massachusetts

Died: 1886-11-21 Boston, Massachusetts

Son of President John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams and his parents lived in St. Petersburg, Russia for several years. He attended the Boston Latin School and graduated from Harvard College in 1825. He studied law and earned admittance to the bar on January 6, 1829, and started a practice in Boston. In September of that same year, Adams married Abigail Brooks, with whom he had six children. Adams served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1841-1843 and in the Massachusetts Senate from 1844-1845. He was an editor of the Boston Whig newspaper from 1846-1848. Adams ran unsuccessfully as a Free-Soil Party candidate for vice president of the United States in 1848. He won election, as a Republican, to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1859 and served until his resignation on May 1, 1861. He earned appointment from President Abraham Lincoln as minister to England and served from 1861-1868.

Biographical Directory of the American Congress, 1774-1961 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1961), 458; Gravestone, Mount Wollaston Cemetery, Quincy, MA; Kinley Brauer, "Adams, Charles Francis," American National Biography, ed. by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1:74-77.