After serving at a base hospital in France with the University of Pennsylvania unit, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps and discharged in 1919.
[1][2][3] He was a mentor to Howard Henry Peckham who helped him organize the library and who later became an accomplished historian involved in groundbreaking research in the American Revolution.
[1][2] In 1923, Adams was appointed director of the Clements Library and professor of history at the University of Michigan, positions he held until his death in 1951.
Initially, the Library consisted of the personal collection of Clements, thousands of rare books, newspapers, maps, and manuscripts, including the papers of General Thomas Gage, Sir Henry Clinton, Lord George Germain, William Petty, Lord Shelburne, and Nathanial Greene.
Adams expanded the holdings of the library with significant acquisitions like the 1663 Eliot Indian Bible and The Valley of the Mississippi Illustrated by John Caspar Wild and Lewis Foulk Thomas.
He died of heart disease in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1951, aged 58,[1] and was interred at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.