Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas John Bunyam Adams Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

JOHN BUNYAN ADAMS

(transcribed by Sheryl McClure)

John Bunyan Adams, farmer, teacher, publisher, banker, lawyer, legislator; high in the councils of the Republican party and friend and adviser of governors and other officials, county and state, was born near Potwin, Butler County, March 25, 1873. He died in El Dorado, March 12, 1921, one of the most widely known and sincerely beloved citizens in Kansas.

One wonders at the wide range of his talents and especially one wonders that he, or any one, should become so outstandingly notable in so many lines. He was successful as a teacher, though he was only a youth, himself, at the time he taught. He founded the old Leon Press and later owned newspapers in Potwin, Augusta and El Dorado, being prominent in that profession throughout the time he acted as a publisher and editor. He became a banker and was high in the confidence of the late N. F. Frazier, whose son-in-law he later became, and he helped to found the Butler County State Bank, of which he was chairman of the board for many years. He served six years as a representative in the legislature from this county and was a leader in his support of constructive measures. He was brilliant and forceful as an orator and, as an impromptu speaker, he probably had no equal in the entire Central West. J. B. Adams, because of his intellectual attainments, his magnetic personality, his loyalty to friendships, his picturesque career, became one of the remarkable men of this section and left a heritage of splendid citizenship and civic and patriotic service to his family, his friends, his city, county and state that will endure.

Mr. Adams was educated in the Butler County public schools and in the Teachers College, Salina, from which institution he was graduated in 1893. He taught school the following winter and in May, of the following year, 1894, he began the publication of the Leon Press, at Leon. The following January, he removed the plant to Augusta, changing the paper's name to The Augusta Press. In September, 1896, he was offered a position as teller in the Farmers & Merchants bank, then owned by N. F. Frazier, Sr., and his associates, and came to El Dorado. In 1899, when the Frazier interests disposed of their stock in the Farmers & Merchants Bank and founded the present Citizens State Bank, Mr. Adams became cashier of the new institution. He continued in this capacity until 1909, when he withdrew and founded the Butler County State Bank, with a capital stock of $25,000 and of which he became chairman of the board. At one time, 1916, although the youngest bank in the county, it had deposits accumulating to nearly $400,000. He also was a stockholder and vice president in the State Bank of Douglass and assumed a leadership among the associated bankers of the state, being vice-president of the Kansas State Bankers Association for two consecutive years.

His first political preferment came in 1899 when he was elected to the legislature, serving for three terms, or until 1905. At various sessions, he acted as chairman of the committees on banks and banking and on penal institutions. He also sponsored and successfully passed various bills for the promotion of sound banking in the state and gave industrious co-operation to all measures looking toward the more rapid development of better roads, schools and other Kansas institutions. His party nominated him for the state senate in 1904 and, in 1912, the conservative, or regular wing, of the Republican party gave him its support for the nomination for congress from this district, but the Roosevelt sentiment, centralling in Victor Murdock, publisher of the Wichita Eagle, was too much to overcome. In 1916, he was chosen as one of the Kansas delegation from Kansas to the Republican national convention, in Chicago, which nominated Charles Evans Hughes, present chief justice of the United States supreme court.

But regardless of these wide business and political activities, he first was a progressive citizen of El Dorado. It is a well known fact that not a single progress movement ever initiated in this city failed to secure his support. When Chester C. Shelden decided to dispose of his Walnut Valley Times, Mr. Adams purchased it and continued its publication, using it to help develop the city's consequence. He later joined with Rolla A. Clymer and others in consolidating the two papers, in 1919, under the name of The El Dorado Times and was principal owner of the paper at the time of his death. He joined with others in providing ample residences for the great influx of people during the "oil boom" and two additions, Liberty and the Adams, each of which is filled with beautiful homes, are monuments to his civic progress. He assisted in making the Kafir Corn Carnivals a success; was a charter member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Service club, the Country Club and of all other similar organizations of the city. Fraternally, he was a thirty-second degree Mason, Knights Templar and Scottish Rite and a Shriner with membership at Midian Temple, Wichita. He was a member of no church, but his people were largely Methodists. He was a generous contributor, however, to all the denominations.

Mr. Adams was of English stock and his American ancestry traced back to Colonial Massachusetts, where Joshua Adams, founder of the family in America, settled upon coming from England in 1660. "The family," says Judge Volney P. Mooney, in his History of Butler County, "has been representative of the best citizenship and its sons fought in the French and Indian, the Revolutionary and the Civil Wars and have been active factors in the development, from a pioneer standpoint, of Massachusetts, Maryland, Vermont, Illinois and Kansas." J. B. Adams' parents were Amos and Nancy M. (Cain) Adams, natives of Illinois. The father of Amos Adams was William Adams, born in Hagerstown, Maryland, and who moved to Fulton County, Illinois, becoming a pioneer of that region, just as his son, Amos, moved on to Kansas in the late 1860's and became one of Butler County's most responsible citizens. Amos Adams was a Civil war veteran and was active in the Grand Army of the Republic organization in Butler County for nearly two score years.

On November 29, 1905, Mr. Adams was united in marriage to Miss Edna Frazier, only daughter of the late N. F. and Emma (Crook) Frazier, pioneers of Butler County. Mrs. Adams was given every advantage of wealth and culture and is one of the leaders of the group of younger matrons in club and civic work. Her ancestral line is given in full in the biographical sketch of her father, the city's leading banker for thirty years and which appears in this volume.

Two children were born of the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Adams. They are Frank Frazier and John Bunyan, Jr. They reside with their mother at the Adams home on Walnut Hill.