Henry Adams' great-grandfather was a lowly tenant farmer, but, in 1853, a forged document fooled the editors of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (NEHGR), and the false lineage was republished in 1893 in Browning's "Americans of Royal Descent".
[9] The NEHGR has diligently tried to warn its readers about this false lineage disseminated by such as the Register's 1902 book notice of the Reverend Hiram Fairbanks' "The Ancestry of Henry Adams of Braintree, New England".
One of the sons returned to England, and after taking time to explore the country, four removed to Medfield and the neighboring towns; two to Chelmsford.
This stone and several others have been placed in this yard, by a great-great grandson, from a veneration of the Piety, humility, simplicity, prudence, patience, temperance, frugality, industry and perseverance, of his Ancestors, in hopes of Recommending an imitation of their virtures to their posterity.
He believed that: "After giving the matter particular and thorough investigation... my conviction is that Henry Adams was from Braintree in the county of Essex, on the east coast of England.
The Hooker company was mostly made up from immigrants of Chelmsford, perhaps from Braintree and other neighboring villages of Essex, who had arrived just to the new colony the year before.
"[12][13] Hence it appears highly probable that Henry Adams from Braintree in Essex joined Hooker's Company and arrived in Boston in 1632.