ADAMS:
Andrew Jackson Adams, later Captain Adams, came with the Bishops and Harpers to Pocatalico, "about the year" 1843; he was one year older than the John Bishop, father of the author of this hook. I can state correctly that Andrew J. Adams was born in Pike County, Kentucky, in the year 1829, son of a highly respected young Virginian and his wife, both of whom died there in Kentucky. We have no information as to the given names of his parents or of the events that left him an orphan, too young to preserve the history of his parents. He was fourteen years of age when he came to this Pocatalico country and made his home ainong the Bishops or Harpers as he choose; always received at the fireside or dining table with the other boys of the family; when the jeans or linen in the loom was having yard after yard added day by day as women of the household worked and sang "Andy's share was always counted among the necessary yards to weave; so with the tanner and the shoemaker of the family." Andy's shoes or boots were counted with the rest.
After the breaking up of the Bishop family, elsewhere related, Andy went with the larger Bishop boys to Ripley, in the adjoining county, there be and the Bishop boys worked for a short time carrying brick on the brickyard; next we know to relate is that at the age of twenty-three, Andy has a contract to build a certain section of the Glenville, Ripley and Ohio turnpike, through Cassville (later Spencer); again about the year 1853, he is a construction contractor building parts of the Ravenswood and New California turnpike in Jackson County; here he courted and married his wife, Eliza Pickens, daughter of John and Mary A. (Law-rence) Pickens, of Mason and Jackson Counties; one son was born to Andrew and Liza (Pickens) Adams, his name Phillip Curry Adams; he is the same P. C. Adams so often mentioned in the history of the business of the City of Spencer.
On the outbreak of the War of the Secessions "Andy" Adams enlisted as a private November 26, 1862; in Co. H, Third Regiment, W. Va. Volunteer Cavalry. Promoted 2nd lieutenant Feb. 19, 1863; 1st lieutenant Feb.15, 1865; in place of A. W. Adams, who was transferred; promoted to captain April 20, 1865; mustered out June 30, 1865. In this war service he steadily rose from subalteran ranks to that of captain, with which commission he was mustered out of service at the end of the war. He at once went into business of divers kinds, at Ravens-wood, West Virginia, the main one of which was that of a hardware store; about the year 1875, he came back to Roane County with his wife and son, Phillip C., transferring also all his business to Spencer, and as shown by reports of committees of the county court, was an active participant in the county's public business for some seven to ten years, during which time he returned to the haunts of his boyhood days and bought some three hundred acres of land, part of the old Bishop-Josiah Hughes place, and there built the bost farm house of the time in the district and tried to become a farmer; cleared many acres of the then still untouched forest, employing more workmen than the natives there had ever seen in one gang; the wife and son liked it all, and settled them-selves, keeping up the farm and raising the best herds of cattle of the district for some fifteen years. Captain Adams' business in town kept him there; from whence he finally went to Minnesota and never returned; died and was buried there about the year 1912.
Phillip Curry Adams, son of the Captain A. J. Adams above mentioned, married Mollie J., daughter of Hezekiah and Jemima Miller, of Lower Spring Creek, on the 27th of June, 1886, his age 28. To Phillip C. and Mollie J. Adams were born and by them reared in the Town of Spencer the following named children: Ernest E., Ruth, Harry Rudolph, Hubert S. and Phillip C. junior.
Source: History of Roane County, West Virginia, 1774-1927, William H. Bishop, Esq., p 431-432
Submitter: Sandy Spradling, October 1, 1999
