chaddams

While much is known about Charles S. Addams, the famous cartoonist, history has recorded little about his father, Charles Huey Addams, or his wife Grace. He was born in Ohio, and although he had studied to be an architect, was a piano company executive for the Acolia Company. In 1903 he married Grace Spear. The couples’ son Charles S. Addams went on to become a famous cartoonist. Born on Elm Street in Westfield NJ, it was there that the younger Addams made famous the Elm Street home by immortalizing it in one of his New Yorker cartoons. The elder Charles did encourage has son Chas, as he became to be known, to work on his drawings while still a student at Westfield High School. The younger Addams was a member of the high school literary magazine called the Weathervane, where some of his early works were featured. Addams was distantly related to U.S. presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, despite the different spellings of their last names, and was a first cousin twice removed to noted social reformer Jane Addams. As a side note, Chas was not buried along with his parents, but was interred following his cremation in the pet cemetery on his estate known as the Swamp, located in Sagaponack, NY.