Alvin Adams was born on June 16, 1804 in Andover, Vermont, United States; the ninth of eleven children born to Phebe (Hoar) Adams and Jonas Adams, descendant of Henry Adams of Braintree. Left an orphan at an early age, the boy was cared for by a guardian and older brothers.
Adams received a common schooling in his native town of Andover, Vermont.
At the age of sixteen, Adams set out to seek his fortune, working several years for a stage and hotel proprietor of Woodstock, Vermont. Turning his hand to numerous employments, young Adams gained considerable experience, including marriage and bankruptcy, the latter in the produce business during the bad year of 1837. Undaunted, he attempted the same business in New York City only to fail again.
In 1840, associated with Ephraim Farnsworth, he established Adams & Company by purchasing two season railway tickets from New York to Boston and return. One day he would start from Boston to New York and his partner from New York to Boston, and vice versa on the following day. They contracted to carry valuables, securities, and bundles for delivery to either city and soon to intermediate points. Thus the express business began. As the ordinary delivery of valuables and parcels was tardy, unsafe, and unprotected, the convenience of Adams's service was appreciated by banks, merchants, and individuals making valuable shipments, and won general confidence which increased its clientage. The idea took hold, and Adams had the genius to develop it and the aggressive push to advance the business to large proportions. Farnsworth soon gave way to William B. Dinsmore, who struggled along with Adams in the creation of the huge express company. Their business union was cemented by the marriage of William B. Dinsmore Jr. , to Adams's daughter.
In 1841 Adams & Company bought the Norwich route to Boston from William F. Harnden and four years later all his routes between Boston and New York. In 1842 Adams extended his agencies to Philadelphia, and later to Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis, where he met the competition of Wells and Fargo. In 1849 he entered the California field, establishing within a year thirty-five offices in the towns and mining-camps and at least one station in Oregon. Three years later he started branch agencies and banking houses in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. As this extension did not prove wise, the Australian houses were discontinued and the coast business was abandoned to such stout competitors as Wells and Fargo and the heavily capitalized Western freighters. Adams found competition in the East keen enough, but an amalgamation of express companies remedied the situation. The Adams Express Company was incorporated, 1854, with $10, 000, 000 capital and with Adams and Dinsmore in control as president and secretary-treasurer. The smaller concerns of Thomson & Company and Kingsley & Company were absorbed, as well as Harnden & Company, which through agencies in Liverpool, Paris, and Havre had developed a lucrative business with immigrants destined for America in the transfer of parcels and sale of money-orders and steamship and railway tickets. This combination was henceforth able to compete on equal terms with the American Express.
During the Civil War the Adams Express Company reaped large profits in shipping arms, munitions, and supplies for the government, in delivering parcels from their homes to soldiers in camp or hospital, and in forwarding soldiers' pay and messages from the battle-field to the families at home probably in some out-of-the-way village or isolated Western farm. This was a service which won appreciation and merited reward. On his death he left few friends other than business associates, and no monument save the great express business which he founded and to which he gave his whole being.
Adams was married to Ann Rebecca Bridge of Boston, November 10, 1831.
