Person:Jacob Adams (11)

Served in Revolutionary War as private in infantry from 1777-83 in VA. Also guarded prisoners at Ft. Frederick, VA. 3/24/83 received back pay of 76 L, 12 S thru Col. John Gibson (WAR V. 4, pg. 77, by H.Z. Ethernode, archivist). Enlisted as private in 1st Regiment of Maryland's Continental Line. Also served in VA units. (Effie Adams Fitzgerald Journal) Jacob Adams enlisted as a private, Feb. 5, 1777, in Rawlins Regiment. Also mentioned as a private on the muser roll of Corp. John Kershner's Company, guarding prisoners of war at Fort Frederick, June 27, 1778. (Info. rec'd by Mrs. Emma Frances Adams Waddell, Oakland, CA, from the War Department in 1911). The Adams ancestors came from England to Virginia prior to 1750 as Jacob Adams was in the War of the Revolution. Our record so far begins with Jacob Adams and his two brothers, John and Spencer. If we knew whether Jacob Adams was born in England, we could trace the ship's record; I imagine somewhere there is a record. Several families of Adams came over, but I don't know which branch we belong to. My father (Andrew Jackson Adams) said there was a Sir William Adams among our English ancestors. (From corres. of Mrs. Emma Frances Adams Waddell [DAR member] with James Linn Adams in 1935 and 1938). Birthdate given as 1752 by Guy Lawrence Adams. Deathdate given as Oct. 1833 by Guy Lawrence Adams. Both Jacob and his wife were Baptists. Jacob Adams, third of four sons of John Adams Sr. and his wife, Ann, was born in Fairfax County, Virginia Colony. Four years later, Loudoun County was formed from Fairfax, and it was in this area the Adams family lived. The first mention of Jacob Adams is in 1774, when he turned twenty-one years of age and is named in Loudoun County's list of tithables as one of three tithes in his father's family, living in Shelburne Parish. Although it is the only appearance of his name in lists of tithes, on March 8, 1775, Lord Fairfax leased 100 acres on the "south side of Blue Ridge" to Benjamin Adams and "his brothers, Jacob and Spencer and the longest liver of them." When the American colonies rebelled, young Jacob Adams enlisted as a private soldier in the First Regiment of Maryland's Continental Line. Loudoun County is in northern Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Maryland. There also is evidence of Jacob's serving in Virginia units during the Revolution. Jacob's military service may have taken him to NOrth Carolina where, on January 7, 1777, he married Mary "Polly" (Stamper) Towsin, a young widow with two baby daughters. The ceremony took place in Rowan County and was recorded in the courthouse at Salisbury. Jacob and Mary (Stamper-Towsin) Adams may have lived five years or more in Rowan County, where Jacob's eldest brother, John Adams, also lived. However, Jacob Adams's name first appears in Wilkes County's tax list for 1784; after that, his name does show annually in tax lists as well as censuses. His family settled on Roaring River, where the rest of his family lived, but he was the only brother who did not go to Kentucky. The 1787 state census of Wilkes County--ten years after Jacob's marriage--clearly outlines his family. His household consisted of his and Polly, two Towsin girls (now in there early teens), the couple's two sons, Abraham, who was born in 1778, and Isaac, who was born in 1780, and two daughters. There years later, the 1790 Census shows at least one of the Towsin girls had married, and the Adamses had two more sons, Jacob Jr., who was born March 27, 1787, and Spencer Adams, who was born June 19, 1790. Two more children were born, John, April 20, 1792, and Elizabeth, in 1794. Jacob Adams was a successful planter. His plantation was on the South Fork of Roaring River. While have only 100 acres for which he was taxed between 1784 and 1786, he made his largest single purchase of land on January 29, 1788, when he acquired 243 acres on South Fork from William Wilcoxin (Wilkes Deeds D:401). An additional fifty acres for which he was taxed in 1805 included a grant from the state (NC Grant No. 2524), dated December 11, 1804, described as "on his own line." In later life, Jacob Adams reportedly moved to Reddies River, where Polly (Stamper) Adams died in 1823. He died there in October, 1833. She was sixty-seven years old while he was eighty when he died. All of their known sons and a daughter married, had families, and all of them moved to Missouri, some by way of Tennessee. They settled in Cass, Johnson, and Pettis Counties in the southwestern part of Missouri. (Adams Families of Southeast Kentucky, D. A. Griffin & R. E. Parkin, 1986)