Ever since the year 1871, members of the Adams family have contributed to the good citizenship, progress and development of Shawnee County, their activities having invaded the fields of agriculture, merchandising, consulting engineering, education, religion, and public service. The founder of the family in this state was the late Jacob Clendenin Adams, and at present it is worthily represented at Topeka by Philander Hamilton Adams, who at this time is the owner of the original homestead, in addition to being a well known business man of the capital city.
Jacob Clendenin Adams was born in 1823 at Ossian, New York, and when a young man left the Empire State and turned his face toward the setting sun. His destination was near Richmond, Indiana, which he reached after a long and tedious journey; and there he was engaged in teaching in the early subscription schools for several years. In 1849, he was united in marriage with Miss Nancy McCoy Hamilton, of Decatur County, Indiana, a daughter of James Edward and Jane McCoy Hamilton, who were large land owners. Not long after that event, he turned his attention to farming, in which he continued to be successfully engaged in Indiana until 1871, which year saw his advent in Kansas. By this time, Mr. Adams was a settled farmer, and when he came to Shawnee County he had no other idea than to engage in his adopted calling. That, however, was one of the worst years in the agricultural history of Kansas, with a state-wide drouth, a financial panic, and a grasshopper plague, and Mr. Adams concluded that he could wait until conditions were more favorable. By 1875, matters were again running smoothly, with good crops and prices booming, and Mr. Adams accordingly purchased 160 acres of fine Kaw River bottom lands, three miles west of North Topeka, on the lower Silver Lake road, which property, with the exception of a small tract, has since remained in the family possession, and now belongs to Philander Hamilton Adams, of Topeka. When Jacob Clendenin Adams came to Kansas, he still retained his property in Indiana, and to this he returned after a short stay in Kansas. He died in 1881. He was the father of eight children, to whom he gave the advantage of college education. They are as follows: Florence, the wife of George C. Merrill, professor of mathematics in Andover College, Massachusetts, and later of Washburn College, Kansas. Philander Hamilton, the subject of this sketch. Mary, who married Robert B. Steele, of 1634 College Avenue, Topeka, son of Rev. John A. Steele, first Presbyterian minister in Topeka. Lillian, the wife of W. W. Mills, a well known dry goods merchant of Topeka. Luella, who is the wife of Charles W. Emery, of Philadelphia, who is a descendant of a New England family. Arthur Lincoln, consulting hydraulic engineer, an acknowledged authority, and otherwise prominent, now deceased; a graduate of the University of Kansas, who married Mary Gemmell, of a distinguished Kansas family. Anna Laurie, an exceptionally brilliant woman, twin of Arthur L., who married Rev. William Baird; went to Korea as a missionary with her husband, and there died, June 9, 1916, leaving three sons who are attending school in America. James Edward, a graduate of Washburn College and Johns Hopkins University, now a missionary in Korea, who marr;ed for his first wife Nellie Dick, daughter of a Kansas pioneer doctor; she died in Korea, the mother of three sons and one daughter. In 1912, he was married to Caroline Babcock, daughter of a familv of prominence and wealth of Neenah, Wisconsin. To this union, there have been born two children, a son and a daughter.