The Biographical Dictionary of America/Adams, Franklin George

ADAMS, Franklin George, historian, was born at Rodman, Jefferson county, N.Y., May 13, 1824. His father was a farmer, and he had only the limited educational advantages of farmers' sons of the period—the district school for less than half the year. But he made the most of his scanty opportunities, and by the time he was nineteen had fitted himself for teaching the English branches in a somewhat advanced school at Cincinnati. This he did until he was twenty-four years of age, attending meanwhile law and medical lectures, and at the end of three years graduated from the law department of Cincinnati college. He engaged in the practice of the law in Kansas, to which state he emigrated in 1855, settling first at Ashland where he remained for a few months, when he removed to Leavenworth, and the following year again changed his residence to Atchison, where he lived for several years, acting as probate judge of Atchison county in 1858-'59. In 1858 he was a member of the Leavenworth state constitutional committee; 1863, clerk of the United States district court, Topeka; 1865-69, United States Indian agent for the Kickapoos at Kennekuk. He edited the Atchison Squatter Sovereign 1857; State Record and Kansas Farmer, 1863; Atchison Free Press, 1864-'68, and the Waterville Telegraph, 1871-72. He was secretary of the Kansas state historical society, 1875-'99, and published "The Lives of the Presidents" and the "Homestead Guide" (1873). He died at Topeka, Kan., Dec. 2, 1899.