John Quincy Adams and Louisa Catherine (Johnson) Adams had three sons and a daughter. Louisa was born in 1811 but died in 1812 while the family was in Russia. They named their first son George Washington Adams (1801–1829) after the first president. Both George and their second son, John (1803–1834), led troubled lives and died in early adulthood.^[57][58] (George committed suicide and John was expelled from Harvard before his 1823 graduation.)

Adams' youngest son, Charles Francis Adams (who named his own son John Quincy), also pursued a career in diplomacy and politics. In 1870 Charles Francis built the first memorial presidential library in the United States, to honor his father. The Stone Library includes over 14,000 books written in twelve languages. The library is located in the "Old House" at Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, Massachusetts.

John Adams and John Quincy Adams were the first father and son to each serve as president (the others being George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush). In addition, each Adams served only one term as President.

Charles Francis Adams, Sr. was born in Boston, and attended Boston Latin School and Harvard College, where he graduated in 1825. He then studied law with Daniel Webster, and practiced in Boston. He wrote numerous reviews of works about American and British history for the North American Review.

Adams was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1841, served in the state senate 1844–1845, founded and edited the journal Boston Whig in 1846, and was the unsuccessful nominee of the Free Soil Party for Vice President of the United States in 1848. In 1872, he was again nominated for Vice President, this time by the so-called "Straight-Out Democrats," who were Democrats alienated by the Presidential candidacy of Horace Greeley.^[2]

Beginning in the 1840s, Charles Francis Adams, Sr. became one of the finest historical editors of his era. He developed this expertise in part because of the example of his father, who in 1829 had turned from politics (after his defeated bid for a second presidential term in 1828) to history and biography. The senior Adams began a life of his father, John Adams, but only wrote a few chapters before he resumed his political career in 1830 with his election to the U.S. House of Representatives. The younger Adams, fresh from his edition of the letters of his grandmother, Abigail Adams, took up the project that his father had left uncompleted, and between 1850 and 1856 turned out not just the two volumes of the biography but eight further volumes presenting editions of John Adams's Diary and Autobiography, his major political writings, and a selection of letters and speeches. This edition, titled The Works of John Adams, Esq., Second President of the United States, was the only edition of John Adams's writings until the family donated the cache of Adams papers to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1954 and authorized the creation of the Adams Papers project; the modern project had published accurate scholarly editions of John Adams's diary and autobiography, several volumes of Adams family correspondence, two volumes on the portraits of John and Abigail Adams and John Quincy and Louisa Catherine Adams, and the early years of the diary of Charles Francis Adams. Charles Francis Adams published a revised edition of the biography in 1871. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1857.^[3]

As a Republican, Adams was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1858, where he chaired the Committee on Manufactures. He resigned to become Lincoln's minister (ambassador) to the Court of St. James (Britain) from 1861 to 1868. Powerful Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner had wanted the position, and became alienated from Adams. Britain had already recognized Confederate belligerency, but Adams was instrumental in maintaining British neutrality and preventing British diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Part of those duties included correspondence with British civilians including Karl Marx and the International Workingmen's Association.^[4] Adams and his son, Henry Adams, who acted as his private secretary, also were kept busy monitoring Confederate diplomatic intrigues and the construction of rebel commerce raiders by British shipyards ( like the hull N°290 , launched as "Enrica" by John Laird & Sons , and which was soon transformed near the Azores Islands into sloop-of-war CSS Alabama )

Back in Boston, Charles Francis Adams declined the presidency of Harvard University, but became one of its overseers in 1869. In 1870 Adams built the first presidential library in the United States, to honor his father John Quincy Adams. The Stone Library includes over 14,000 books written in twelve languages. The library is located on the property of the "Old House" (also known as "Peacefield") at Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, Massachusetts.

During the 1876 electoral college controversy, Adams sided with Democrat Samuel J. Tilden over Republican Rutherford B. Hayes for the presidency.

Charles Francis Adams died in Boston on November 21, 1886, and was interred in Mount Wollaston Cemetery, Quincy.^[6]

His children^[7] with Abigail Brown Brooks included:

• Louisa Catherine Adams (1831–1870) married Charles Kuhn
• John Quincy Adams II (September 22, 1833 – August 14, 1894)
• Charles Francis Adams Jr. (May 27, 1835 - May 20, 1915)
• Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 - March 27, 1918)
• Arthur Adams (1841–1846)
• Mary Gardiner Adams (1845–1928) married Dr. Henry Parker Quincy
• Peter Chardon Brooks Adams (June 24, 1848 - February 13, 1927)