Austin Adams

Austin Adams (May 24, 1826 – October 17, 1890) was an American lawyer and justice of the Iowa Supreme Court for twelve years.

Heritage

Austin Adam's ancestors lived in Essex, England. Henry Adams, his 5x Greats-Grandfather, emigrated to Massachusetts in 1632 with his wife and children. His descendant include great-great-grandson Massachusetts Governor Samuel Adams; great-great-grandson President John Adams and 3x greats-grandson President John Quincy Adams. Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams are his 3rd cousin 3 times removed and 3rd cousin 4 times removed, respectively.

Austin's father, Jeremiah Adams, was a successful farmer, clerk of the school district, and served twice in the state legislature. He was a captain in the War of 1812. His grandparents had secured that school and a church on a corner of their farm in 1794. He retained pleasant memories of the district school, which he attended until he was fourteen. In later years he wrote "[The] older pupils, the young men and women [...] not only assisted me in my studies, but their presence and example afforded me inspiration." His family attended the Baptist church on their farm. Adams heard only "dogmatic and terrorizing theology" at the church and it "succeeded in destroying much of the happiness of his childhood."

He showed great interest in law as a boy: "The law had a perfect fascination for me before I was ten years old, and I think before I ever saw a lawyer or a court." He often went to the court house in Woodstock, Vermont to listen to cases.

At age thirteen, his teacher urged his father to give Austin a better education than he could receive at the country school house. At fourteen he was sent to Black River Academy in Ludlow, Vermont, to prepare for college. At age sixteen he began teaching students at the academy, some of whom were older than he was, in the winter while working on his father's farm in the summer.

At nineteen he entered the sophomore class at Dartmouth College; he graduated in 1848, receiving his A.M. degree in course.

For the next five years he taught at West Randolph Academy in West Randolph, Vermont, while pursuing his legal studies. He resided in Dubuque for the rest of his life. Later in life, he said: "I wanted more liberty, a society with more variety than I had ever seen in the East."

Adams was instrumental in promoting education in Dubuque; he opened an academy, one of the first institutes of secondary education in Dubuque, and taught with Mary Mann, wife of Horace Mann, for six months. During the winter of 1854 he proposed building a public library; he raised funds for it with a series of lectures and solicited donations of books from private libraries.

He actively supported John C. Frémont's campaign for president in 1856. While he didn't naturally like politics, he was strongly committed to early Republican principles.

He helped to organize a YMCA in Dubuque in 1857. For three years he had a Bible class, while a member and a trustee of the Congregational church, and for two years in the Universalist church. One year he had evenings devoted to the study of physical science at YMCA. He had the subject of geology, and "unrolled the gospel of the storied world to the youth gathered there."

In 1858, after listening to the Lincoln-Douglas debates in Galena, Illinois, he said of Lincoln:

During the American Civil War in 1864, he was secretary of the Sanitary Fair for three months to raise funds for the hospital.

In December 1865, he and ten other gentlemen formed a literary club called "The Round Table". They obtained a room and furnished it with a round table that could fit fifteen people around it. Wendell Phillips and Ralph Waldo Emerson visited it while they were in Dubuque. They were impressed, and later told their friends in Boston about their "find in the West."

He was president of the Iowa State University (ISU) board of education, 1868, trustee of the university from 1871 to 1877, and lecturer in its law department, from 1875 until his death. leaving the firm of Adams, Robison & Lacy. He was chief justice for four years, from 1880 to 1881 He remained strong mentally until his final hours: he usually read five to six hours a day.

Suffering a prolonged illness, he died at four in the morning in his home in Dubuque, Iowa, on October 17, 1890.