Charles S. Adams Charles S. Adams has been for
nearly thirty years one of the representative business
men and popular and influential citizens of Volga, where
he has been engaged in the general merchandise business
since 1888, as senior member of the well-known and
representative firm of Adams & White, in which his
coadjutor is Edward W. White. He has been a resident of
the Hawkeye state since he was a lad of six years and is
a scion not only of one of the prominent and influential
families of this commonwealth but also one that was
founded in New England in the early colonial era of our
national history. Mr. Adams was born in the city of
Lowell, Massachusetts, on the 7th of May, 1851, and is a
son of Captain Shubael P. and Lydia E. (Stetson) Adams,
both likewise natives of the historic old Bay State,
where the latter passed her entire life, her death having
occurred in 1853, and the subject of this review being
the younger of her two children; the older child, Mary,
is now in San Francisco, Cal. Captain Adams was reared
and educated in Massachusetts, where he became a
successful representative of the legal profession and
where he served as a member of the state legislature from
1845 to 1857. In the latter year he became one of the
pioneer representatives of his profession in the city of
Dubuque, Iowa, where he built up a practice that gave him
distinction as one of the leading members of the bar of
this state. He united with the Republican party at the
time of its organization and was one of the most
prominent and influential advocates of its principles and
policies to be found in Iowa at the time of the
climacteric period leading up to the Civil War. He was a
specially forceful and effective stump speaker and did
yeoman service in stumping Iowa in support of Abraham
Lincoln when that great man became the Republican
candidate for president of the United States. He gained
his military title as provost marshal, Third Dist. Iowa,
in the great conflict through which the integrity of the
Union was perpetuated, and he was one of the venerable
and honored pioneer members of the Iowa bar at the time
of his death, which occurred in 1894. Charles S. Adams
continued his studies in the public schools until he had
completed the curriculum of the high school and
supplemented this discipline by a course of higher study
in Bayless College, at Dubuque. In 1872, shortly after
attaining to his legal majority he entered railway
service, in the employ of the C. D. & M. Railroad
Company, now part of the C. M. & St. P. system, and
for a period of sixteen years he was in active service as
a skilled locomotive engineer. In 1888 he established his
home at Volga, Clayton county, where he has been engaged
in the general merchandise business during the long
intervening years and where the high reputation of the
firm of Adams & White has ever constituted its best
commercial asset. Mr. Adams has been liberal and loyal in
the supportting of those enterprises and measures that
have contributed to the civic and material prosperity of
the community; is a Republican, though never a seeker of
political preferment. He served as a progressive and
valued member of the board of education of Volga for the
long period of twenty-six years and has otherwise been
quietly but effectively influential in local affairs. He
is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias, Brotherhood of
Locomotive Engineers, the Brotherhood of American Yeomen
and the Modern Brotherhood of America. On the 12th of
May, 1880, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Adams to
Miss Emma E. Crain, who was born in this county on the
23d of May, 1861, and who is a daughter of James and
Harriet Crain, who were born and reared in England and
who became pioneer settlers of Clayton county, Iowa,
where they established their home on a farm near Volga in
the year 1854, both passing the remainder of their lives
in this county. Mr. and Mrs. Adams became the parents of
four children, of whom the first was Harriet, who was
born July 8, 1881, and whose death occurred in the
following month; William J., who was born November 2,
1882, was a student in U. I. University for four years
and is now one of the principals in the Collier-Adams
Manufacturing Company, at St. Joseph, Missouri; Shubael
P., who was born June 18, 1885, was graduated in U. I.
U., class '07, also in historic old Yale University,
1910, and he likewise is with the Collier-Adams
Manufacturing Company, of St. Joseph, Mo.; and Edna, who
was born September 30, 1889, was graduated in the Volga
high school, after having made a record of twelve years'
attendance in the village schools without a single mark
of absence or tardiness: she was later in the Upper Iowa
University and she is now at the parental home, a popular
figure in the representative social life of the
community. source: History of Clayton
County, Iowa; From The Earliest Historical Times Down to
the Present; by Realto E. Price, Vol. II; pg. 17-18 |