John Adams was an American educator noted for organizing several hundred Sunday schools.
Background
John Adams was born on September 18, 1772 in Canterbury, Connecticut, United States, the eldest of ten children of John Adams, a farmer ans Revolutionary soldier, and Mary Parker. His forebears were simple farming folk, but he traced his ancestry back to Henry Adams, from whom the two Presidents of the United States were also descended.
Education
Adams was enabled, through the painful economy of his parents, to enter Yale College, where he graduated in 1795.
In 1854 Yale made him a Doctor of Laws.
Career
After some experience in teaching at Canterbury, at Plainfield Academy, and at Bacon Academy, Colchester, Connecticut, he was offered in 1810 the principalship of Phillips Academy, then at the lowest point in its history. There he found only twenty-three pupils and a complete lack of discipline. Under his firm rule conditions quickly improved, and the academy was soon in good standing. The number of students gradually increased until in ten years it was over a hundred, the faculty having meanwhile been enlarged to four.
Although he was naturally conservative and did not disturb the predominance of Latin and Greek, he somewhat modified the curriculum; of the twenty subjects required for a diploma in 1820, however, thirteen were classical and two mathematical. He set a high standard of scholarship, and his boys did well in college. Among his pupils were Nathaniel P. Willis, Josiah Quincy, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Adams's influence was exerted most vigorously in the field of morals and religion. He was "by all his views, habits, and impulses a revival man, " and he aimed "to lay as securely as possible in the character of every pupil the foundation of Christian manhood. " He held frequent prayer-meetings and accomplished many conversions; indeed he boasted that one out of every five of his pupils later entered the ministry.
After 1825 Adams seems to have loosened his grip on school affairs, with the result that the attendance gradually fell off and he lost the confidence of the trustees; in 1832, when he was sixty, he resigned at their request.
During the remaining thirty-one years of his life, he struggled bravely against poverty, first as principal of an academy in Elbridge, New York, then as president of a female seminary in Jacksonville, Illinois, and finally as agent of the American Sunday-school Union in the Middle West; for twelve years he drove from village to village in an open carriage, organizing Sunday-schools and winning the title of "Father Adams. "
He died on April 24, 1863 and was buried in Jacksonville, Illinois.
Achievements
Personality
He was a handsome and imposing figure, with the bearing of an autocrat. As he walked down the aisle in church, his ivory-headed cane ringing against the floor, he seemed to dominate the assemblage.
Connections
Adams was twice married, first to Elizabeth Ripley, in 1798, by whom he had ten children. After her death, in 1829, he married Mrs. Mehitabel Burritt of Troy, New York.
One of his sons, William Adams, became president of Union Theological Seminary.