Warren County Biographies
William E. Adams
William E. Adams, now deceased, was born in Luzerne, Warren county, New York, December 15, 1819. He attended school as a boy, and was reared on the farm, also working in his father's sawmill. When he was about fourteen years of age his father died, and three years later he came west to see the country, first visiting Buffalo, then Cleveland, then going to Portsmouth, Ohio, and from there down the Ohio river to Cairo, and then up the Mississippi to St. Louis. After visiting two weeks in Pike county, Illinois, he went back to St. Louis, but after a short time again went to Pike county. There he assisted in building a sawmill, but after about a month an old neighbor, Harmon Wells, came along and induced him to go home. They went to Wheeling, Va., by steamboat, on the Illinois, Mississippi and Ohio rivers, then across the Alleghany mountains by stage to Baltimore, from there going to Philadelphia and the coast by rail, then by steamer to Albany and thence home. Eighteen months later he again visited Pike county, Illinois, and subsequently again returned home. In 1840 he spent a year at Athol, N.Y., part of the time repairing a sawmill in company with his uncle. In 1844 he went to the polls in his native village and voted for William Henry Harrison, this being his first presidential ballot. November 7, of the same year, he was married at Brandon, Vt., to Cordelia A. Jones, and after a year spent in Warren county, New York state, the young couple took up their residence in Vermont, where Mr. Adams was engaged in farming and conducting a sawmill. In 1854 he came to Jackson county, Iowa, but after six months returned to Vermont. In the spring of 1856 he brought his family with him and located near the Minnesota state line, pre-empting land in section thirty-five, Bristol township, Fillmore county. That fall he purchased six acres from L. G. St. John, on which was a log cabin into which the family moved. In 1866 he built a frame house, rented his farm, and moved to the village of Granger. Five years later he purchased a home in Florenceville, Iowa, where he spent the remainder of his days, dying in 1892. His wife passed away in February, 1890. In the family were four children: Asher R., Mary W., who married Dr. H. H. Haskins; Frankie, who died in 1856, and Nellie E.
Source: "History of Fillmore County, Minnesota" by Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge, Chicago: H.C. Cooper, Jr. & Co., 1912, 1398 pgs.