The Famous Adams.

When John Adams arrived in France in 1778, he was greeted with a persistent question: was he "le fameaux Adams?" John Adams often bristled at the attention paid to others in the Patriot cause, such as James Otis, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. But in 1778 he acknowledged that he was not the famous Adams; that was his cousin, Samuel, leader of the Massachusetts Patriots, and the only American whom King George III exempted from a promise of amnesty. "If the American Revolution was a blessing, and not a curse," John Adams wrote later, "the name and character of Samuel Adams ought to be preserved. It will bear a strict and critical examination even by the inveterate malice of his enemies. . . . His merits and services and sacrifices and suffering are beyond all calculation."

Education.

Samuel Adams was born in Boston on...