He was a quiet and unassuming man, known for his “habits of industry,” a skilled craftsman who used his
hands and tools to build not only furniture but homes. Samuel Adams was also dedicated to the vision of
creating a settlement on the Iowa frontier founded on the tenets of Christianity, a goal he helped achieve
through his abiding faith, personal sacrifice, and community spirit.
Born in 1823 to a Massachusetts farming family, Samuel grew to manhood near Amherst College in
Hampshire County. The children were raised in the church and taught by their father that the institution of
slavery was sinful and that “all men had rights." Destined for the life of a farmer, young Adams instead
found himself more suited to working with his hands and learned to be a cabinet maker in Brattleboro,
Vermont. He was also keenly interested in the theological debates of the day associated with religious
revivals sweeping through the nation in the early 1800s. He was particularly intrigued by the writing of
Charles G. Finney, a nationally known Presbyterian minister who promoted social reforms, including
abolitionism and equal education for women and African Americans.
Adams found himself compelled, in
his words, to “get some theological questions settled." To ease his “religious anxiety of [the] mind,” he
traveled by stagecoach in the spring of 1848 to Ohio hoping to meet Finney who was at that time serving
as president of Oberlin College, one of the first colleges in the nation that admitted women and people of
color. Samuel never met Reverend Finney but made the acquaintance of George Belcher Gaston, a farmer
and former missionary to the Pawnees in Nebraska.
Gaston believed that the Oberlin experiment should
be transplanted to the sparsely populated prairie of western Iowa and the 24-year-old Adams agreed to
join him; the pair would later recruit John Todd, a young minister from Clarksfield.
Before embarking on their journey to Iowa, in the fall of 1848, Todd
officiated at Samuel’s marriage to Caroline Matthews, the couple
having been introduced by Gaston. The newlyweds joined eight
other pioneers led by Gaston on their trek to Fremont County.
Settling first in an area near the Missouri River known as Civil
Bend, the group relocated to higher ground to escape flooding and
mosquito-borne disease, founding Tabor in April 1852. In this
frontier environment, Adams put his carpentry skills to good use,
building not only his home but helping construct the Gaston and
Todd dwellings as well, the last being completed in the summer of
1853. Adams was remembered as having fashioned the window sashes, doors, and a recessed bookcase, all from black walnut, in the
Todd home.
The pioneers wasted no time in turning what they referred to as “the colony” into a thriving community.
Adams participated in town meetings where the settlers planned various projects, including acquiring
building materials, laying out the town and cemetery, and raising money for the construction of a school,
a goal Adams supported with his labor and a twenty-dollar pledge. The time-consuming work of building
a village, however, didn’t detract from his involvement in supporting important social causes. In 1855,
Adams added his name to the roster of the Washingtonian Temperance Society, taking the pledge to
abstain from all intoxicating beverages. And in 1856, he signed his name to the roster of the Republican
Dresser made by Adams, on display in the Todd House in Tabor.
Association of Tabor, a group dedicated to the “rescue of the government from the control of the
slaveholding oligarchy.”
The national debate over slavery was never far from the minds of the early settlers. The founders and their
families gathered for weekly anti-slavery prayer meetings and the issue received regular attention in
Reverend Todd’s sermons, faithfully attended by Adams. But, there were pro-slavery elements in Fremont
County in the 1850s which Adams remembered as being hostile to the new settlement. Years later he
recounted that he “came very near being butchered by one [man] who said he would rather fight an
abolitionist than eat”.
The opportunity for Tabor to become actively involved in the abolitionist struggle appeared soon enough
with the arrival in town, on July 4, 1854, of a family traveling from Mississippi to Utah. Camped near the
hotel of Jesse West, the group included an "enslaved group of six." Adams talked quietly to the bondsmen
and discovered they were willing and ready to seek freedom, and in spite of being warned that “slavery
men” were all around, he organized an escape for that evening. The freedom seekers were spirited away
that night and led by a series of conductors east across Iowa before being placed on a ship on Lake
Michigan for Canada. In later years, Adams recalled that he had “the honor of being really the first
[Underground] Railroad conductor in southwest Iowa.”
Tabor was a hotbed of anti-slavery activity in the mid-1850s, with wagon trains of settlers moving south
through the village on their way to Kansas Territory to help in the Free State struggle that became known
as “Bleeding Kansas.” None other than John Brown used Tabor as a safe haven for training his men,
storing weapons, and letting his wounded recuperate in the homes of the residents. Adams recounted
seeing Brown frequently, particularly when the Ohioan attended prayer meetings. Adams remembered
that Brown had “the look of a general about him.”
By 1866, the town was ready to
officially open Tabor College but
resources were required for
construction of a new building,
funded almost exclusively through
local donations. Adams, a man who
owned only one acre of land on
which his house stood, was one the
first of 19 donors, giving $200 and
a promissory note for an additional
$400. He was ever the tireless
supporter of the college, giving
some $6,000 to the school over the
course of his life. Adams was also a
sustaining member of his church.
He was one of eight original
members of Tabor’s congregation
when it was organized in the summer of 1852, and he remained an active congregant for the rest of his
life. He was eventually elected deacon, a title he accepted with justifiable pride.
After Caroline’s death in 1875 (ending a marriage that produced three daughters and one son), Samuel
married Ann Watson in 1878. The ceremony, naturally, was sanctified by Reverend Todd. The couple
lived a quiet life in town, running a store on Main Street that specialized in selling just about anything
that was made from wood, but furniture was a specialty. Adams also sold funeral supplies, including
caskets, a common sideline for carpenters at that time.
When Samuel Adams passed on February 26, 1910, he had lived to see his beloved Tabor grow into a
prosperous farm community of over 900 souls—he witnessed the birth of the Tabor & Northern Railroad,
the construction of a new brick building housing the Tabor College Music Conservatory, named in his
honor, the arrival of the automobile, electric power and telephone service to his store. He lay in state in
Adams Hall before interment in Tabor Cemetery and was lauded for his “stand for right,” seen as a
“blessed heritage” for the town. Also remembered was his gentle manner, modesty and hearty laugh; one
can imagine him chuckling and waving away the lofty title of “Grand Old Man,” bestowed upon him in
his later years. More to his liking might have been a good-natured characterization, offered during a
lecture by the Reverend William Barton, comparing Adams’ appearance as “passing as a model for a
drawing of Uncle Sam.”
Source: Written and submitted by Harry Wilkins
