Born in Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia, the son of wealthy barrister Travers V Adamson BA (1827-1897 b Dublin, Ireland, d Eastbourne, Sussex) and Janet Muirhead Stevenson (b Australia), his mother dying nine days after his birth.

The family, by this time his father, and including his step-mother Catherine Synott (1850-1929) and surviving siblings and half-siblings returned in 1888 on the RMS Victoria to England, to live in Kensington, London. 

In 1894 Adamson married Ethel Farrant, youngest daughter of Mark Farrant, surgeon of Beaufort House, Exeter. A former law student who decided to turn to art, Travers Adamson lived at 1 Penare, Penzance in 1901 and was listed in the Year's Art.  His artistic interests and skill are not yet known, and he died at the young age of 41 (GRO, March Qtr 1905).

Their son, Lt Travers Farrant Adamson (c1896-1916) died in the Battle of the Somme in WWI.