Adams (William T.) is born in Medway.

William Adams moves with his family to West Roxbury in 1838, teaches and serves as master at several Boston public schools, marries Sarah Jenkins in 1846, and moves to Dorchester. He publishes his first book in 1853,* and goes on to write more than 100 books and 1,000 stories, many of them adventure stories for boys under the pseudonym of Oliver Optic. Perhaps out of jealousy, Louisa May Alcott writes a short story in 175 in which one of the characters derides Adams’ stories as “Optical delusions.” Adams is elected to the Dorchester School Committee in 1867 and to a single term in the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1869. He dies in Dorchester in 1897.