Samuel Adams UE (1730 - 1810)

Born 2 Jan 1730 in Stratford, Fairfield, Connecticut

Ancestors

Husband of Martha (Curtiss) Adams — married 1755 in Arlington, Vermont

Descendants

Died Jan 1810 at about age 79 in Edwardsburgh, Grenville, Upper Canada

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Samuel Adams was a United Empire Loyalist.
UEL Status:Undetermined
Date: Undated

Biography

Samuel Adams was born in Stratford, Fairfield County, Connecticut Colony on January 2, 1729/30 ^[1] of Samuel Adams and Mary Fairchild .

In 1764 he moved with his family to Arlington in the New Hampshire Grants. On several occasions, Adams served as representative and negotiator for Arlington and the other surrounding towns. In 1774, Adams came into conflict with Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys for dissenting with their land title policy. After a brief trial, Adams' captors had him tied to a chair and hung from the sign post, of the Catamount Tavern, as a public humiliation.

In 1776, Dr. Adams was captured by Whigs, for his British Loyalist sympathies and he and his sons were imprisoned. Adams escaped and fled north to Canada, reaching the British lines in Quebec. Joining the King's Army, Adams served, during the Lake Champlain campaign in 1776 and raised an independent, Loyalist company, known as Adams' Rangers, which served, under British General John Burgoyne, in the Saratoga campaign of 1777. Four of Adams' sons served in his ranger company, with his eldest son Gideon Adams, acting as Ensign.

Following the war, Adams and his sons settled in Southeastern Ontario, alongside other disbanded British Loyalist troops and their families.

In January 1810, Samuel Adams died at the age of 80 in Edwardsburgh, Upper Canada, British North America, British Empire, now present-day Edwardsburgh, Ontario, Canada.

Samuel Adams, born in 1730 in Stratford, Connecticut, became a physician and surgeon. He and his wife, Martha Curtis, left Connecticut in 1764 to relocate in the newly forming settlement in Arlington, Vermont. Within nine years, he had purchased 700 acres of land of which 130 acres had been improved and had built a house and barns for a large number of horses, cattle, sheep and hogs. This was about 1773 and near the outset of the Revolutionary War.

The beginning of the Revolution found a large portion of the citizens of Arlington sympathizers of the British cause. Sooner or later many of the principal landholders and influential men of the town either voluntarily left or were driven out, and their estates confiscated by the New York government.

The land on which Samuel Adams had been established was involved in a controversy between New Hampshire and New York. In 1774 Adams was so active in his advocacy of the New York side, he drew the wrath of Ethan Allen and 'The Green Mountain Boys' and was subsequently arrested by Allen and carried to Bennington. After a hearing he was convicted as an enemy, and punished by being hoisted to the catamount sign of Fay's Catamount Inn and there suspended for two hours.

When the Revolution began, Dr. Samuel Adams and his sons, Major Gideon Adams (then a Lieutenant in the Loyal Rangers, Jessup's Corps), Andrew, Joel, Sam William, and James volunteered in the King's Rangers, joined the British forces despite the fact that Samuel's father and brothers were firmly on the other side. Although he had attempted to make arrangements for his father to receive his land, it was confiscated by the Americans and reported upon in the "Sequestrations, Confiscations And Sale Of Estates - State Papers of Vermont". The men of the family joined General Burgoyne as scouts while their families removed to Yamachiche in Quebec, but one of several refugee camps made available to the escaping Loyalist families.

Prior to the revolution Edward, Ebenezer and Joseph Jessup owned large properties on the west side of the Hudson river near Albany NY. They were early to join the British cause and in 1776 they used their influence to recruit British supporters to form a company for the defense of the colony. It was decided that Ebenezer, although second oldest, would be given command allowing him additional pay to support his family. With a small group of men they joined Sir Guy Carleton’s army at Crown Point. They were unable to raise a full company of recruits and were thereby attached to Sir John Johnston’s King’s Royal Regiment of New York 1st Battalion. It was with this group that they participated in one of the leading campaigns in the Revolution.

On June 1, 1778, it was declared by the Loyalist headquarters in Quebec that the Saratoga Convention was no longer binding because the Americans had broken its terms. Dr. Adams men were quartered at Sorel, Quebec. By 1781, Dr. Samuel Adams, now age 51, had retired, and his forces were amalgamated into the second battalion of the King's Royal Regiment of New York.

Loyalist doctors were less influential than retired military surgeons. Dr. Samuel Adams was more notable for his activities as a Loyalist military man than for his professional work as a physician and surgeon. Not unexpectedly, the war years strained on Adams and he retired to keep an inn in Montreal, at Point-aux-Trembles.

At age 80 years, Captain Dr. Samuel Adams, having retired from his inn in Montreal, located to Johnstown to be closer to his sons and their families. There, in 1810, the Captain passed away from old age and is one of the first to be buried in North Channel Cemetery, Edwardsburgh Township., Grenville County.

Adams' Company of Rangers, or Adams' Corps of Royalists, was one of the smallest Loyalist units raised during the Burgoyne Campaign of 1777. It consisted of but one company, divided into two divisions of sorts -- one of Rangers, and the other of Batteaumen. The soldiers of Adams' Rangers were recruited primarily from the region of the New Hampshire Grants, also known by the Patriots as the Republic of Vermont, with the largest number of recruits coming from Arlington. Adams later stated that he had raised 70 men for the company. Either late in the Burgoyne Campaign or in early 1778, the Rangers absorbed a body of soldiers from the Bateaux Service under Jeptha Hawley who was also from Arlington.

In 1777 Adams' Rangers were part of the scouting service during the Saratoga Campaign. Loyalist claims made by men of the Ranger company described their activities as piloting the army, running dispatches between British commanders, raiding cattle from Rebel farms, and defending Loyalist farms from Patriot foraging parties. After Burgoyne's defeat and surrender at Saratoga, Adams' Rangers and other Loyalist units were allowed to retreat to the Province of Quebec. For the next three years Adams' men, like most other Loyalist troops in Canada, were occupied with garrison duty and employed in work parties, improving the defense of the Province.

Several of the soldiers and their families lived in the refugee camp at Machiche, near Trois-Rivieres, Quebec. In early 1778, the company numbered 37, all ranks; by mid 1780 their number had been reduced to 27. Frustrated by lack of prospects and dispersal of his men around the province, Captain Adams demanded to be allowed to join his company to Rogers' Rangers (2nd Battalion King's Rangers) or go to New York to serve in the Central department. When his demands were refused, Adams disbanded his men in late October 1780. A few of the men from the company joined Rogers' Rangers, but the majority were absorbed into Daniel McAlpin's Corps, a collection of under-strength Loyalist units. In November 1781, these British units were consolidated into a new Provincial regiment, the Loyal Rangers, commanded by Major Edward Jesup.

Following the war, a few of Adams' men returned to the United States, some settled in Quebec around Sorel, but most were granted land in southeastern Ontario along the St. Lawrence River. The largest concentration of former Adams' Company men settled in Ernestown and Edwardsburg Townships.

Marriage

Child: Dr. Samuel Adams UNKNOWN

Marriage: 07 MAR 1729, Stratford, Fairfield, Connecticut Colony

Birth: 1708. CT; Marriage: 1728, CT

Sources

1. ↑ "Connecticut Births and Christenings, 1649-1906", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F74X-W3P : 7 January 2020), Samuell Adams, 1729.

• Curtiss, Frederic Haines, 1903. A Genealogy of the Curtiss Family, being a Record of the Descendants of Widow Elizabeth Curtiss, who settled in Stratford, Conn., 1639-40. Rockwell & Churchill Press, Boston, page 26

• Orcutt, Samuel. A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut (New Haven, Conn. : Press of Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1886) Vol. 2, Page 1115.

• Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 04 May 2018), memorial page for CPT Samuel Adams (1730–1810), Find A Grave: Memorial #162960257, citing North Channel Cemetery, Johnstown, Leeds and Grenville United Counties, Ontario, Canada ; Maintained by Brian McConnell UE (contributor 48857516) .

• The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records (NEHGS, Boston, 2011) Vol. Stratford Page 1. Birth record: 2 Jan 1729/30.

• http://www.jimlow.com/home/genealogy/webcards/ps03/ps03_091.html