Adams (Charles Follen) is born in Dorchester.

The son of Ira and Mary Elizabeth (Senter), Charles Follen Adams, leaves school at 15 to work for N.D. Whitney & Company, then the J.D. Clapp & Company, and serves in the civil War. Returning to Boston, he begins to write the humorous poems in dialect for which he becomes best known. Adams marries Hattie Louise Mills in Boston on October 11, 1870. He publishes his first book in 1881.*