Thomas Boylston Adams (1910-1997)

He was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and was a direct descendant of both U.S. President John Adams and John Quincy Adams. He was educated at the Groton School and Harvard University. He fought in World War II as a Captain in the Army Air Force. After the war, he rose to become Vice-President of Sheraton Hotels from which he retired to become President of Adams Securities. He was an early and vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and ran unsuccessfully as a peace candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. He also unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 1968 and was a Delegate to the 1972 Democratic National Convention. He is - to date - the last member of the Adams family to have run for political office. He was President of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1957-1975); Treasurer of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (1955-1990); Trustee of the Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society; and, a columnist for The Boston Globe (1974-1991). He and his cousin, George C. Homans (both great-grandsons of Charles Francis Adams), were filmed in 1985 in the Boston Athenaeum Club taking part in an entertaining conversation that depicts the, "rare and declining upper-class American accent belonging to the legendary Boston Brahmins". In 1940, he married Ramelle Frost Cochrane and they were the parents of five children.