Midwestern Death Trip

Adams Family Cemetery is a small cemetery about four miles north of Potwin on the corner of Adams Road and NW 110th Street. The cemetery is located at the far northwest corner of a homestead where Joseph H. Adams settled with his family in 1859 near the vanished town of Plum Grove.

You wouldn’t pass this corner unless you were lost or you lived here (and there’s only a handful of habitable houses for miles). In fact, a research paper published in 1970 showed that’s exactly why Plum Grove residents left – there’s little opportunity here.

This cemetery may have been a makeshift burial ground for the settlers of Plum Grove, as there are legends of at least seven other people being buried here, possibly more.

The cemetery wasn’t officially a cemetery until 1933 when granite markers were placed for the Adams family by a descendant. Shortly after, the small parcel of land was transferred from the family to Plum Grove Township. There hasn’t been a burial at this cemetery since 1897 (or maybe 1895).

The Adams family gravestone and the small individual markers for each immediate family member are secure behind a fence that was added in 1950.

The Adams Family

“…at Plum Grove, like an oasis in the desert, lived Joseph Adams and his excellent family.”

James R. Mead, History of Butler County Kansas

Joseph H. Adams and his first wife Dinah (also spelled Diana and Dianah) are widely accepted to have been the first permanent settlers in Plum Grove Township in Butler county.

“Joseph Adams, came to Kansas in 1859, and settled three miles north of Potwin, Butler county, where he was a pioneer and achieved success in his pursuits.”

History of Butler County, Kansas, 1916

According to the documented history of Butler county and the Adams family, Joseph H. was lured west from Illinois by the California Gold Rush. He staked a claim in Kansas in 1859. At that time, Butler county (and much of central and western Kansas) was wild, open plains, sometimes roamed by buffalo and various native tribes.

“…the Adams family cemetery wouldn’t be in Butler County today if news of the California Gold Rush hadn’t reached [Joseph H. Adams …] back in the 1850’s. He […] built a log cabin on the land he had staked [in Butler County].”

“Cemetery Plots Adams Family’s History,” The Wichita Eagle-Beacon, 1983

Driving through rural Butler county, it’s easy to see what drew the Adams family to settle here. The great plains and rolling hills are teeming with beauty, life, and perceived opportunity. Deer, hawk, bubbling streams, and the vast prairie make for an inviting scene.

“Joseph H. Adams, who was the first man to make permanent settlement in Plum Grove Township, came from Dwight County, Illinois. It is tradition that he was the first white man ever to make the trip from Emporia to the Whitewater River in northwest Butler County. Mr. Adams located one mile southwest of the present Potwin, in the spring of 1860. He lived there until fall, moved to Whitewater City and spent the winter, and then moved to the northeast quarter of section 7, where his death occurred in October, 1875. Mr. Adams’ wife had died in 1868, after which he married Mrs. Margaret Pitzer, of Chase County. After the death of Mr. Adams, his widow married M. S. Bond, in 1879. She died in 1911. Mr. Adams’ son, J. A. Adams was born in Plum Grove Township in 1874. His son, J. C. Adams, homesteaded the northwest quarter of section 19 in Plum Grove.” [Butler County’s Eighty Years  –  1855-1935]

Joseph H. Adams is thoroughly documented being settled with his family at his homestead in Plum Grove by the spring of 1860.

It was Joseph’s youngest son Joseph A. Adams (pictured above) and his wife who transferred ownership of the cemetery to the township in 1934. Joseph H. and Dinah’s oldest living son at the time, John Calhoun (J.C.) Adams, is the one who placed the granite gravestones at the Adams family cemetery in 1933, leaving us one of the only remaining visual and tangible reminders of the specific individuals who lived and died here.

J.C. Adams’s wedding to Nancy Pitzer (his step-sister) in 1871 was the first wedding in Plum Grove Township.

Adams Family Graves

George W. (or M.) Adams (1840-1864) was the son of Joseph H. and Dinah Adams. George was employed by James R. Mead in the 1860’s, when this part of Butler county was still Otoe County. Mead wrote that he built his Towanda home, known as Mead’s Ranch, “with the assistance of […] a young George Adams.” Mead also wrote, “George Adams died from exposure in the icy waters of the Arkansas,” which was the only record of George’s death. George is said to be the first permanent Plum Grove Township settler to die here. The large family stone says George W., but the smaller stone says George M.

Dinah Sophia Adams (née Conaway, 1821-1868) was Joseph H.’s first wife. She was 16 when they married. The name Dinah is carved in stone, but her name was also spelled Dianah in other documents. She may have gone by her middle name Sophia. She died in 1868 during the time the family lived in Plum Grove Township, but at least one family member expressed doubts that she is actually buried here. That could be because the Adams family is documented as moving around a bit, from southwest of Potwin to Whitewater City to the final homestead in Plum Grove Township, but it’s not clear when those movements occurred.

Amy Luella Adams (1871-1873) was the daughter of Joseph H. Adams and his second wife, Margaret (née Rodman, 1829-1911). Margaret was a widow when she married Joseph, and brought eight children into the marriage. Amy was her ninth known child, and one of two children she had with Joseph. After Joseph died, Margaret married Isaiah M. Bond and inherited the land where her daughter was buried. There is no indication of how Amy died, but diseases like whooping cough and measles were the top cause of death for children in 1873.

Joseph H. Adams (1819-1875) was the family patriarch who brought the family west to Kansas. The death of his son George caused him to establish this cemetery here, the first and only cemetery in the vanished Plum Grove. He also presumably helped bury his first wife and daughter here. While his gravestone bears a birth year of 1819, other documents suggest that he may have been born closer to 1816. There is no information suggesting how Joseph died.

“Eva, wife of James Van” (1850-1882) was Sarah Evalan (or Evalyn) “Eva” Adams, the youngest daughter of Joseph H. and Dinah. She married James Vann (with two n’s) in 1867, a year before her mother died. The Vanns were also early Plum Grove Township settlers – James Mead specifically remembers them being there as early as 1863. Eva bore at least five children with James, including a set of twins. Her youngest daughter Alice (the young girl in the family homestead photo) was just a year old when Eva died.

The Other Graves

Family legend says that several others were buried here in unmarked graves. There is some information on each memorial on Find a Grave, like parents names, or ages of the individuals alleged to be buried here, suggesting this information was recorded and passed down through the Adams family. The Find a Grave memorials are linked below, and I’ve added my research to each.

Elizabeth Anna Foulk, d. 1868, “wife of Benjamin; aged 90yrs.”

I found no clear historical record of Elizabeth or Benjamin Foulk living near Plum Grove in the 1860’s. There is a record of a man named George Foulk purchasing land nearby in 1876 who may have been a relative (possibly an adult child or grandchild) of these Foulks.

Jesse Baker, d. 1869, “son of Leander & Mary; aged 3yrs.”

Jesse probably died after June 1870, not in 1869, because he appears in the the 1870 census with a Daniel and Mary Baker who lived near the Adams homestead with their sons Fred and Jesse. The 1875 Kansas census and 1880 Federal census show a Leander and Mary Baker living with son Fred and daughter Ettie, but no Jesse. A man named Leander Baker purchased a quarter section of land nearby in 1879. Mary Baker died in 1887 and is buried at Shaefer Cemetery in Potwin. The Walnut Valley Times reported Leander’s travels to and from Kansas: he came here in 1868, left around 1895 after his second wife divorced him, and moved back just before 1900. When Leander died in 1909, his obituary stated that he “resided on the Whitewater in Murdock township owning one of the finest farms there. Fate seemed unkind to him and pursued and punished him. Especially his family troubles were great and not of a character to enumerate here. He has a daughter living in Oklahoma and one said to be his son there. From these he was estranged.” Leander was said to be buried at the Butler county poor farm cemetery, but he has a marker next to Mary.

Luella Gates, d. 1873, “dau of Robert & Emma.”

A woman named Emma Elvira (née Coats) married a man named Robert T. Gates in 1870 in Illinois. They apparently had a very contentious relationship, as they married again in 1895, and then divorced in 1910. Robert was reported as attempting suicide after their second marriage, and in 1920 he hung himself at the Soldier’s Home in Leavenworth. Robert and Emma are buried together at Pleasant Center Cemetery a few miles north. Emma’s obituary stated that two of her children died in infancy. Two names – Bertha I. and Robert W. – have a space on the family gravestone at Pleasant Center Cemetery, and these are presumed to be their children. There is no mention of a Luella on the family gravestone. Could Luella actually be Bertha? (More on that below.)

James and Horace Wiggins, d. 1880, “died in prairie fire.”

According to Amy Adams, the Wiggins children buried here died from smoke inhalation caused by a prairie fire in 1898 and their names were Elsie and Jimmie, but the memorials on Find a Grave say it was James and Horace who died, and it happened in 1880. It’s possible that these Wiggins’ had a familial relationship to the Adams family – Margaret’s oldest daughter was named Elizabeth Jane Pitzer, and a woman with that name married a man named Horace Wiggins in 1862. They may have had a son named James. That Horace farmed in Cowley county in 1870 with wife Jane and sons George and James. In 1880, Horace is living with a wife named Mary (Elizabeth Jane died in 1875) and his sons George, James, Francis, William, and Horace. Land records show that a man named Joel Wiggins purchased land in Butler County in 1889, but it’s not clear if he’s related to these Wiggins, or what exactly the relationship may be between the Wiggins/Adams/Pitzer families.

Infant Mullins, d. 1883, “infant of John & Rosie Mullins.”

I’m not sure who this infant could be. There was a single man John D. Mullin living nearby in 1880, and in 1900 he was a widow – could he have married a Rosie in 1880 who birthed a child that died in 1883, and then Rosie died? (Family says he married a woman named Amanda in 1882, or 1885. She died in 1898.) Or, could this infant belong to a completely different couple, Samuel and Emily Mullins, rather than John and Rosie? There was a Samuel Mullins married to an Emily (née Ruckle) in the area at the time, but their marriage certificate is from 1887, five years after this infant died. Emily’s surname is Mullins on the marriage certificate, not Ruckle. This could be an error, or could mean that she was married before (either to Samuel or another Mullins, like a brother of Samuel). Emily’s obituary stated that she married in 1877 and “was the mother of eight children, of which seven are living.” Is that dead child this infant?

Infant Rodman, d. 1897, “infant of Robert & Rosie Rodman.”

Robert E. Rodman was the name of Margaret Adam’s nephew, so Robert and Rosie’s infant child is most likely related to the Adams family. The memorial comes with a birth year of 1893, the same year the Walnut Valley Times published “Mrs. Rodman and baby Aaron left for home Friday.” This child, who was not exactly an infant at the time of death, may be Aaron Rodman, the son of Rosella “Rosie” Ella (née Olinger) and Robert E. Rodman. A sentence published in The Augusta Press in 1895 said “Robert Rodman’s little child died Thursday evening,” suggesting that the family either suffered more than one loss in the 1890’s, or the death date passed down through the Adams family for this child is inaccurate. Robert and Rosie both died in their 70’s and were buried in Washington.

In 1970 it was documented that there were “two other gravestones — neither legible” behind the family plot fence. It’s not clear if the stones mentioned are these two stones at the edge of the fence, or the two mystery stones in the woods.

Mystery Stones

There is a stone marker in the woods behind the Adams Family Cemetery for Bertha I. Gates (1872-1878), the daughter of Emma and Robert T. Gates. It has a corresponding footstone. But why is it here? Bertha’s name is inscribed on the family stone at Pleasant Center Cemetery about nine miles away, and the Adams family doesn’t have a record of Bertha being buried here.

Is Bertha buried here or is she at a different cemetery? Is the Luella Gates that the Adams family documented being buried here actually named Bertha? Could the I actually be an L, for Luella (Bertha Luella?), an early error that stuck?

Adams Family Homestead Today

The remainder of the land that Joseph H. Adams homesteaded in 1869 is owned by a family trust, but the buildings here have been vacant for years. The land is still farmed.

**Special thanks to Jeff Golladay, Joseph H. Adam’s 3rd great-grandson.

Resources

Adams Family Cemetery, Find a Grave

Adams Family Cemetery Parcel Detail

Ancestry Local Research Tree (public)

James R. Mead (pioneer), Wikipedia

King, C. (1991). Childhood Death: The Health Care of Children on the Kansas Frontier. United States: Kansas State Historical Society.

Mead, J. R. (2008). Hunting and Trading on the Great Plains, 1859-1875. 

Mooney, V. P. (1916). History of Butler County Kansas. United States: Standard Publishing Company.

Plum Grove, Brainerd, Whitewater, and Potwin from 1870 to 1900; Roland H. Ensz; Emporia State University; 134 pages; 1970.

Stratford, J. P. (1934). Butler County’s Eighty Years, 1855-1935: A History of Butler County, Biographical Sketches and Portraits. United States: The author.

U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management