Frank R. Adams was born October 29, 1860, son of Isaac and Angeline Horton Adams on Pillar Point, in Jefferson County, New York. He had two siblings, Fred and Jennie. Isaac Adams died of smallpox in 1864 while serving in the Union Army during the Civil War and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Frank lived on Point Salubrious after his father died and early worked as a carpenter. He married Kate Hulsaver, daughter of Mary Jane Douglass and William Henry Hulsaver, at Three Mile Bay, New York in 1893 and thereafter worked as a farmer, living near Chaumont, New York, with the exception of one year when they lived in Depauville, New York. In 1922, he retired from farming and moved to the village of Chaumont where he lived until he died August 12, 1935.

Frank and Kate had seven children: Leila (mar. Stanley Slate), Eathel (mar. Claude Phelps), Cora (mar. Wm. Phelps), Edna (mar. 1st Frank Plato, 2nd Elmer Gillan), Ralph, Leander D. (called Douglas), and Isaac.