Person:John Adams (13)

He lived all his life at Barton St. David. He is the earliest known member of this Adams family line. He is listed in the Muster Roll for the tything of Barton in 1539 as "able bylman fyndyng harnys". He was charged with the duty of providing one "bowe" (bow) with a sheath of arrows as a tax on his goods.^[1]

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Bartlett, J. Gardner, and Edward Dean Adams. Henry Adams of Somersetshire, England, and Braintree, Mass: his English ancestry and some of his descendants. (NY: Private Printing, 1927)
   pages 27-28, 22.

   'JOHN ADAMS of Barton David, born probably about 1500 to 1505, is named in the Muster Roll for the Tithing of Barton, Somersetshire, 1539, ... ' In the subsidy rolls for 1542 and 1543, in the section for Barton, are listed Robert "Adamps" and Alys Adams, widow - presumed to be the widow of John Adams.
   On page 22, the author implies that his father (first name unknown) was living in Barton St David in 1500.

2.   msg 1466, posted 19 Sep 1998 by Julie Otto, in Adams Family Genealogy Forum, Genealogy.com online (http:/genforum.genealogy.com/adams/), accessed Dec 2006.

   'The "Ap Adams" story is one of the most embarrassing nineteenth-century forgeries. It first appeared in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 7 (Jan. 1853), claiming descent from a landed Adams family at Stoke-Gabriel, co. Devon. ... The Ap Adams fiction was DISPROVED in print as long ago as 1927 when Josiah Gardner Bartlett published the known, documented English origins of Henry Adams ...'