The genealogy of Caroline Chamberlain, her sisters Mable and Claudia, and brother Ben C. Adams leads through both parents to Colonial residents of Massachusetts. The ancestry of their mother, Anne Burkley Norton, includes her father, Richard Greenleaf Norton (1829-), a Madison, Wisconsin, optical instrument maker; his father, Jacob Porter Norton (1793-1846), a Mount Zion, Georgia, resident and veteran of the War of 1812; Jacob's father, the Reverend Jacob Norton (1764-), and mother, Elizabeth Cranch (1763-1811), sister to the wife of President John Adams; and Elizabeth's parents, Judge Richard Cranch (1726-1811) and Mary Smith (1741-1811) of Weymouth and Quincy, Massachusetts.
Their father, Henry Cullen Adams (1850-1906), was congressman from Wisconsin's Second District from 1903 to his death. His father, Benjamin Franklin Adams (1822-1902), was a fruit grower in Wisconsin who had been a
classics professor at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York. Benjamin was the son of Isaac Ward Adams (1779-1860) of Vernon, New York, who was the son of Asa Adams (1729-1826) born in Ashford, Massachusetts, and third cousin to President Adams.
