The Biographical Dictionary of America/Adams, Elmer Bragg

ADAMS, Elmer Bragg, jurist, was born in Pomfret, Vt., Oct. 27, 1842, a lineal descendant of Henry Adams of Braintree, Mass. He was graduated at Yale in 1865; organized a system of free schools in Atlanta and Milledgeville. Ga., under the direction of the American Union commission in 1865, and studied law at Harvard. He was admitted to the Vermont bar in 1868: engaged in practice in St. Louis, Mo., and was married in 1870 to Emma Richmond of Woodstock, Vt. He was judge of the circuit court in St. Louis, 1878-84; declined a second term and resumed practice as a member of the firm of Boyle, Adams and McKeighan, which subsequently became Boyle and Adams. He became U.S. judge of the Eastern district of Missouri in 1896, and was a lecturer in the University of Missouri, where he received the degree LL.D.