WALTER J ADAMS

Intelligence of a high order, ample education and splendid business ability win in the conduct of the enterprises of the country or village man of affairs as surely as they do in the management of the interests of his contemporary in the city. This fact is amply illustrated in the labors of such men as Walter J. Adams, of Everest, Brown county, Kansas, an account of whose busy, studious, progressive, useful and successful career forms a fitting portion of this work.

Walter J. Adams, son of the late Augustus C. Adams, of Washington township, and a well known contractor, farmer, lawyer and business man, was born in Springfield, Union county, New Jersey, February 1, 1864. He was taken to Kansas the following year and was reared in Brown county. His early education was gained in the district school and he learned the carpenter's trade in his youth. He began his business career as a contractor in 1881, following that line of enterprise exclusively, successfully and quite extensively until 1890. He built many, if not all, of the best structures that have gone up in the country surrounding Everest within the past fifteen or more years; work which has identified him conspicuously with the development of his county. Meantime he was deciding to enter upon a professional career and he gave some time to study. He spent two years in the Holton, Kansas, Campbell University, and then entered the Northern Indiana Law School at Valparaiso, Indiana. Mr. Adams holds certificates of admission to practice in the circuit courts of Indiana, in the United States district court of Indiana and in the supreme court of that state. He located in Indiana and had begun to achieve success as a lawyer when the confinement incident to his profession was found to be injurious to his health and he gave up the practice of law, temporarily at least. Returning to Kansas he resumed contracting and engaged in farming, making a success of both. He was married, in 1892, to Anna Olson, daughter of Harold Olson. Their children are: Lawrence H., Marcus A., Lillian E., Ethel W. and Ruth C.

Augustus C. Adams, Mr. Adam's father, was born in Saxony, in 1833, a son of a magistrate, and came to the United States in 1851. He secured a place with Spangler, the hatter, in Newark, for whom he worked the first year at six dollars a month to learn the trade. He became a fine workman and was employed as a hatter at good wages, three dollars and fifty cents per day, until 1865, when he went to Brown county, Kansas. He bought a farm in section 11, Washington township, and from that time until his death, in 1895, followed farming. He was married, in Germany, to Martha C. Wentzel, who died in 1882, at the age of forty-three. Their children are: Carrie C., wife of John Q. Page, of Everest; Edward F., who is a stone mason and is married to Josie McGeorge; Walter J.; Josephine M., wife of Henry M. Sawyer; Augustus C., a foreman with the Rock Island Railway Company at Trenton, Missouri, who married Ella Streeter; Henry K., an engineer on the Rock Island Railway, who married Julia Crane; Franklin D., United States district court reporter at Miami, Indian territory; John V., employed by the Rock Island Railway Company as a fireman, who married Lottie Stanley; Robert Clinton, a stenographer with Gardner Lathrop, of Kansas City, Missouri; and Sanford C., a Rock Island Railway fireman, who married Anna Black. Mr. Adams has a fine library and is a devoted student. He possesses an active and fertile mind and is a good talker. He is a member of the Uniform Rank of the Knights of Pythias. One of the active young Republicans of Brown county, he is a member of the central committee and his efforts conduce materially to the success of his party in the county.