His family was descended from Puritans, whose strict religious doctrines had profoundly shaped New England's culture, laws, and traditions.

[2] Adams later noted that "As a child I enjoyed perhaps the greatest of blessings that can be bestowed upon men – that of a mother who was anxious and capable to form the characters of her children.

This began at age six at a dame school for boys and girls, conducted at a teacher's home, and was centered upon The New England Primer.

His family was descended from Puritans, whose strict religious doctrines had profoundly shaped New England's culture, laws, and traditions.

By the time of his birth, the Congregationalists no longer called themselves "Puritans"; their severe practices had largely been dropped in the First Great Awakening of the 1730s.

They turned away from miracles and revelation, preferring biblical criticism and lay inquiry to broaden the mind beyond the passive reception of dogma.

Acknowledging Jesus as a “master workman” and gifted moral teacher, they grew fuzzy about his divinity, opting instead to scrutinize his teachings and doctrines as they related to contemporary culture.

In line with their Protestant peers, most Adamses mistrusted the sensory emphasis and hierarchical nature of “Romish” Catholicism, but they revered Judaism as a source of lawmaking and ethics.The following is a selective family tree of notable members of the Adams family relative to Charles Francis Adams IV: