Adams was born in Oberlin, Ohio on February 5, 1821. He came to Yamhill County, Oregon in 1848. He worked as a teacher and made two trips to the California gold fields before publishing the play "Treason, Strategems, and Spoils, A Melodrame in Five Acts" under the pen name Breakspear in 1852. The play, a political satire that skewered the Democratic party, including Asahel Bush and his "Salem Statesman", was first printed in "The Oregonian", and is often cited along with Margaret Jewett Bailey's "The Grains" as one of the earliest works of literature written in Oregon.