Biography of Stephen Adams

Biographical record of the class of 1850, Yale college
Yale University, Class of 1850, 1877, 
published by Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, printer, New Haven, pages 6-7

    Stephen Adams (Albany, N.Y.), son of John L. Adams, was
born in Fulton, Schoharie Co., N.Y., Feb. 28 1829, and entered
the Class the second term Junior year from the Class of 1849,
having had been absent a year.
    After graduation he was teaching in Amherst Co., Virginia,
till March, 1851, and the rest of the year was engineering for
James River and Kanawha Company. He spent several months,
till Sept. 1852, studying law in the office of R.J. Davis, Esq., of
Lynchburg, VA., when he again engaged in teaching, first as
Principal of the Elon Academy in Amherst for one year, and then
for two years in the family of Anthony Lawson, Esq., Logan Co.,
VA. In the fall of 1855 he was admitted to the bar in Lynchburg.
    For several years he practiced law in Raleigh, Logan, and the
adjoining counties, in partnership with Hon. Evermont Ward. The
news that the convention of his State had passed the ordinance
of secession, which he had up to that time opposed with all his
might, both in private and on the hustings, found him residing
and practicing law at Raleigh C. H., (now) West Virginia. He
enlisted as a private in one of the first volunteer regiments
formed in that section for the Confederate service. Upon the
organization he was elected caption, and he served in the field
with the Army of Northern Virginia until the battle of Winchester,
Sept. 19 1864, when he was desperately wounded while
commanding the 30th Va. battalion, and was taken prisoner. He
was carried to the hospital at Frederick, and when well enough to
be exchanged he returned to Lynchburg. After the war, the laws
of West Virginia then excluding Confederate soldiers from its bar,
he Lynchburg, where he has since been engaged in the pursuit of
his profession. “With a little cork skillfully inserted in my boot you
would scarcely observe in me any effect of the late little
unpleasantness. In conclusion, I will add that I am obeying the
parting injunction of our beloved classmate, Sam Edwards in
1850: ‘Steve, by all means, teach your boys to fiddle.’"
   He was married April 26, 1854. to Miss Emma C. Saunders, of Lynchburg,
and has had six children: (1) John Lawson, born Oct. 13, 1855; (2)
Stephen, born June 9, 1860, died March 22, 1862; (3) William Saunders,
born Dec. 9, 1861; (4) Peter O., born Sept. 21, 1866; (5) Benjamin Donald,
born Sept. 19, 1870, died July 12, 1872; (6) Emma, born July 21, 1875.

Submitted by Valerie F. Crook <vfcrook @trellis.net>

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