Page:Kansas A Cyclopedia of State History vol 1.djvu/25

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KANSAS HISTORY
25

the plaintiff may claim and recover any damages to which he may be entitled for the cause of action established.


Ada, a village of Ottawa county, is located on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. R., and on Salt creek in Fountain township, 10 miles west of Minneapolis, the county seat. It has banking facilities, all lines of business activity, telegraph and express offices and a money order postoffice with one rural mail route. It is the shipping point of a prosperous farming community. The population in 1910 was 300.


Adams, a village of Kingman county, is located in Canton township, some 16 miles southeast of the city of Kingman. It is a station on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. R., has a money order postoffice, and is a shipping and trading point for that section of the county, though the population was reported as only 20 in 1910.


Adams, Franklin George, one of the most earnest and energetic men of Kansas in the great work of perpetuating Kansas history, was born at Rodman, Jefferson county, N. Y., May 13, 1824, and was reared upon his father's farm. He attended the common schools and at the age of nineteen went to Cincinnati, where he received private instruction from an elder brother. He taught in the public schools of Cincinnati, and in 1852 graduated from the law department of what is now the University of Cincinnati. He became profoundly interested in the debate on the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and determined to settle in Kansas. To this end he joined a party from Kentucky which reached Kansas in March, 1855, and settled in what is now Riley county, where they founded the Ashland colony. Before long Mr. Adams returned to Cincinnati, where he taught school again, but in April, 1856, he returned to Kansas and settled on a farm near Pilot Knob, Leavenworth county. He was forced to flee to Lawrence for protection during the border war, and bore arms in defense of that place against the invasion of the pro-slavery men. He was a member of the Leavenworth constitutional convention; was active in the organization of the free-state party in Atchison county, of which he was elected the first probate judge in the spring of 1858. In 1861 he was appointed register of the land office at Lecompton. In September he moved the office to Topeka and held the position until 1864. He was also identified at different times with various publications of the state among them the Squatter Sovereign, Topeka State Record, Kansas Farmer, Atchison Free Press and Waterville Telegraph. He was active in the formation of the State Agricultural Society and drafted the law under which it was organized. He became secretary of the state fair association which held the first state fair at Atchison in 1863. The next year he gave up his various enterprises in Topeka, returned to Atchison, was appointed United States agent to the Kickapoos, and removed to Kennekuk, in the northwest corner of Atchison county. He resigned this agency in 1869, and in the fall of 1870 located at Waterville, Marshall county, where in 1873, he published “The Homestead Guide,” giving the history and resources of northwest Kansas. In the spring of 1875 he returned to Topeka, and the following February the directors of the