Henry Brooks Adams

Henry Brooks Adams was born on Feb 16th, 1838, in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, to Charles Francis Adams Sr and Abigail Brown Brooks. He is the middle child of 7 children including himself. His other siblings are:

Louisa Catherine Adams (1831- 18170)

Col. John Quincy Adams II (1833-1894)

Charles Francis Adams Jr. (1835-1915)

Henry

Arthur Adams (1841-1846)

Mary Gardner Adams (1845-1928)

Brooks Adams (1848-1927)

He was also an Author and Historian. His Grandfather was the 6th President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, and his Great-Grandfather was the 2nd United States President, John Adams. He graduated from Harvard University in 1858 and later attended lectures at the University of Berlin in Germany. He returned home in 1860, and his father, then a member of the United States Congress, asked him to be his private secretary, a familial role between father and son going back to John and John Quincy. On March 19th, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Charles Francis Adams Sr. United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom and Henry Adams accompanied him in his private secretary role. In 1868, Henry Adams returned to the United States and settled in Washington, D.C., where he worked as a journalist exposing political corruption. From 1870-1877, he served as a professor of medieval history at Harvard, then returned to Washington to continue working as a historian. He wrote two novels in the 1880s- “Democracy” (published anonymously in 1880 and in 1880 under the nom de plume of ‘Frances Snow Compton’) and “Esther”. On December 6, 1885, his wife, Marian Adams, committed suicide in Washington, and he erected an elaborate memorial for her gravesite that became one of the most famous and visited in the city. In 1907, he published a small private edition of his autobiography, “The Education of Henry Adams”, and the work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1919. His greatest work (considered his “magnum opus”) was the book “The History of the United States of America 1801 to 1817.” In 1912, he suffered a disabling stroke and died at his Washington home in 1918.