Adams Township, named for President John Quincy Adams, was created in 1854 from the western part of Middlesex Township and the eastern part of Cranberry Township, two of the original Butler County Townships established in 1804. Butler County had only been formed in 1800 and the earliest settlements in Adams had occurred in 1796, responding to the passage by Congress of the Depreciation Lands Act of 1783, which authorized land grants to Revolutionary War Veterans. All of southern Butler County was within the Depreciation Lands Area.

The new township of 1854 contained over 15,000 acres in a square configuration five miles on a side. The area was largely wooded, bisected roughly north-south by Breakneck Creek, which rises in abutting Allegheny County and flows northward into Connoquenessing Creek north of Adams Township. All but the eastern quarter of the Township drains to Breakneck Creek.