Biography - George Adams
GEORGE A. ADAMS, who has lived on his present farm of two hundred and twenty-eight acres in Goreville Township, Johnson County, for the past forty-five years, was born in North Carolina on the River Adkin, January 9, 1801. His father, Moses Adams, who was born in the same county, Surry, seven miles from Rockford, was a son of William Adams, who came from England, and whose wife was a Miss Martin Ireland. They had eight children, five sons and three daughters, the father of George A. Adams being either the second or third child in order of birth. The grandmother of our subject died in old age, and the grandfather lived to be about seventy-five years old. Moses Adams married Elizabeth Horn, of North Carolina, and by her had eight children, four sons and four daughters. The sons being John, William, Jonathan and George A.
Moses Adams and his wife both died in North Carolina and were buried at the Quaker meeting house, where had been buried William Adams and his wife. Moses died some fifteen years before his wife, who at her death was very nearly a hundred years old. Both grandparents and parents were well-to-do and well-informed people, and George A. had excellent educational advantages in a good select school, but he did not appreciate and improve them. However, he learned to read and has been a great student of the Bible. At twenty-one years of age he left home and began farming for himself, and was married in his twenty-second year to Miss Lorey Cannon. In 1831, he and his wife removed to East Tennessee with their four children, where he purchased a farm of two hundred and forty acres, well timbered with yellow pine. He sold his farm and removed to Illinois in 1849, with horses a portion of the way and with oxen the rest. They were four weeks on the way and arrived January 1, 1849, in Johnson County, where he at first took up eighty acres of land, and later was enabled to enter one hundred and sixty acres more of Government land. His wife died in March, 1887, aged nearly eighty years, leaving her husband and eleven children, six sons and five daughters. Columbus N. died in the prime of life leaving a family, and since the mother's death John, a farmer of Williamson County, died November 7, 1892, in his sixty-fifth year, leaving a family. Those living are as follows: William C., a farmer on the home farm, whose wife was Melissa Crawford, of East Tennessee, where they were married; they have nine children living; Mary Ann, wife of Jesse Stroud, a farmer of Tunnel Hill Township, who has five children living; Elizabeth, widow of the late Harvey C. Craig, who has no children living; George W., a farmer of Tunnel Hill Township, and a practicing physician, who has seven children; Martha C., wife of Thomas Hart, who has five children; James M., a farmer of Tunnel Hill Township, who has a wife and four children; and William F., who has a wife and six children. George A. Adams was reared a Quaker, but is not now a member of any church.
Politically, our subject was formerly a Democrat, but is now a Republican. He is now nearly ninety-three years of age and is a wonder, still looking after his farm and working in the field every day of his life. His only weakness is that of deafness, but he is bright and intelligent, and is an entertaining conversationalist considering the opportunities he has had. For his age he is yet young, and has good prospects of reaching his one hundredth year.
Extracted 16 Dec 2016 by Norma Hass from 1893 Biographical Review of Johnson, Massac, Pope, and Hardin Counties, Illinois, pages 406-407.
