San
Joaquin County
Biographies
CHRISTOPHER N. ADAMS
Prominent among the enterprising,
influential and progressive residents of the Elliott district are Christopher
N. Adams and his family, extensive ranchers living about two and one-half miles
west of Elliott, near which town he was born on July 27, 1876. His father, Henry Adams, came to California
in 1869 and settled near Elliott. He was
a native of the north of Ireland, having been born at Snow Hill, near Fermanagh, Ulster County; and Mrs. Adams, who was Susy Peck before her marriage, came with her parents at the
same time that Judge Terry of Stockton arrived.
Her father was from Texas, and she was a native of the Lone Star
State. The first year of his residence
here, Henry Adams chopped wood for a living, and he then took up
sheep-shearing, in which he became an expert.
In the spring and fall he would shear sheep, and in the winter he would
chop wood, while in the summer-time he worked on the threshing machine. Soon, however, he purchased eighty acres of
land near the Elliott schoolhouse; and when he traded that off he received 240
acres on Dry Creek, along the road now known as the Adams Road. He added to his farm until he had acquired
1,080 acres before his death, 440 of which were on Dry Creek, while the balance
was plain land.
Christopher Adams attended the
Elliott district school, and later went to the Stockton Business College. He was the eldest of a family of eight
children, the next younger being Bessie, a most attractive child, who was
killed at the age of five through being run over by a wagon. The third-born is William A., who lives at
Lodi; then comes Mary Estella, who is Mrs. Hatton
Lockeford; and after her Eliza J., who is in Stockton; John H., of Crockett,
California; Walter C. and Robert P., who is with the California State
Department of Architecture. Walter and
Robert were educated at Ann Arbor, Michigan; and John attended the College of
Physicians and Surgeons at San Francisco.
Christopher Adams was reared on the
home place and remained with his father until the latter’s death in 1909, just
prior to which his father deeded him some forty acres of the estate. According to the wish of his father (who died
so soon after an operation that he could not make a will), his brother, the uncle of our subject, received eighty acres of the
property. Afterwards, Christopher Adams
bought out his uncle’s interest. He also
bought a forty-acre tract from one of his brothers, and bought out, as well,
his youngest brother, Robert. The eldest
daughter had been left 238 acres, and this he also purchased. At present he owns 240 acres, on which his
home is located, and has also acquired some 312 acres of land one and a half
miles above Elliott on the Galt-Elliott Road.
He leases out his Elliott ranch.
On his home ranch he is at present running a sanitary dairy and
stock-farm. He raises all his young
stock, and devotes all of the 240 acres to farming, using the land mostly for
pasturing of cattle and the making of hay.
His father built the home he now lives in. He had just passed his sixty-third year when
he died, having lost his devoted wife when she was thirty-eight years old.
At the home of the bride, two miles
south of Bellota, Mr. Adams was married on September 15, 1906, to Miss Mary E.
Dalton, the daughter of Thomas and Celia (Longhurst) Dalton, a charming and
gifted lady who was born in Angle, South Wales, Great
Britain. She came to California with her
parents when she was ten years old, and they settled at Peters, east of
Stockton. She had already attended the
grammar schools in South Wales, and when she came to continue her studies at
Peters the teacher, Mr. Anderson, complimented her on her proficiency and
declared that she was so far ahead of her natural grade that one could see the
efficiency and superiority of the Welsh schools. Mrs. Adams has one sister and one brother
living in California today: Mrs. Eliza
M. Fairbanks, and Thomas G. Dalton, who is in business in Stockton. Her father was a sea captain in the British Navy,
and was in the Coast Guard service. He
contracted influenza in Wales and was not expected to live, and on recovering came out to California for his health. Mrs. Adams, the mother of our subject, had a
sister living at Peters, and so the family came to California and settled
there. Later, Henry Adams settled near
Lodi, and Mrs. Christopher Adams’ father moved to Lockeford, where he operated
a grain farm of 640 acres for four years.
The family then moved to a ranch two miles south of Bellota, and it was
here that Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Adams were married. Henry Adams also ran a ranch near Elliott for
five years. Mrs. Dalton passed away at
the age of about seventy-seven years.
The father resides at Peters and is seventy-nine years old.
Two children have been born to Mr.
and Mrs. Adams: Celia Estella, and
Christopher Norman. In national politics
Mr. Adams is a Democrat. He has served
for many years on the Telegraph district school board; and he is at present,
and has been for the last three years, a member of the Galt union high school
board, of which for the past two years he has been chairman. He has been a member of Lockeford Lodge, I.
O. O. F., since 1902, has passed through the chairs, and has also been a
district deputy of the order.
Transcribed by Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Pages
1108-1111. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2011 Gerald Iaquinta.
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