John Adams (September 18, 1772 – April 24, 1863) was an American educator noted for organizing several hundred Sunday schools.

His life was celebrated by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. in his poem, "The School Boy", which was read at the centennial celebration of Phillips Academy in 1878, thus recalls him: Uneasy lie the heads of all that rule — His most of all whose kingdom is a school.John Adams was born in 1772 at Canterbury, Connecticut, to Captain John Adams, a farmer of Canterbury and an officer in the American Revolutionary War and Mary Parker, the daughter of Dea.

John Adams married his first wife Elizabeth Ripley on May 8, 1798,[1][6] with whom he had ten children.

She was a daughter of Gamaliel Ripley and Judith Perkins and was a great-great-granddaughter of Governor William Bradford (1590–1657) of the Plymouth Colony and a passenger on the Mayflower.

John Adams married, as his second wife, on August 30, 1831, in Troy, Rensselaer County, New York, Mrs. Mehitable/Mabel Burritt[6] She was born July 19, 1779, in Williamstown, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and died at Jacksonville, Illinois, on July 17, 1856.

He graduated from Williams College in 1800, and was licensed to practice medicine at Troy, New York, on March 29, 1802, and quickly gained recognition for his medical skills.

Mr. Blackleach Burritt[1] Yale College 1765 (a great-great-grandson of William Leete, a governor of the Colony of Connecticut)[7] and Martha Welles (a great-great-granddaughter of Thomas Welles, the fourth governor of the Colony of Connecticut).

He was born in New York City and was educated privately at first, and then he went to St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire.