Samuel Adams (Loyalist)

For the Patriot, see Samuel Adams.

Dr. Samuel Adams (1730 – January 1810) was a physician and surgeon, farmer, and loyalist soldier from Arlington, Vermont.

Adams was born in Stratford, Connecticut, in 1730. In 1764, he moved with his family to Arlington in the New Hampshire Grants. On several occasions, Adams served as representative and negotiator for Arlington and other surrounding towns. In 1774, Adams came into conflict with Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys for dissenting with their land title policy. After a brief trial, Adams' captors had him tied to a chair and hung from a sign post as a public humiliation.

In 1776, he was captured by Whigs for his loyalist sympathies and he and his sons were imprisoned. He escaped and fled North behind British lines in Quebec. Joining the King's Army, he served during the Lake Champlain campaign in the Autumn of 1776 and raised an independent company known as Adams' Rangers during the Burgoyne Expedition of 1777. Four of Adams' sons served in his company, with his eldest son Gideon Adams, acting as Ensign.

Following the war, Adams and his sons settled in Southeastern Ontario, alongside other disbanded Loyalist troops.

In January 1810, Dr. Adams died in Edwardsburgh, Ontario at the age of 80.

References

• Kings Men, the Soldier Founders of Ontario, Mary Beacock Fryer, Dundurn Press, Toronto, 1980
• Frontier Spies; the British Secret Service, Northern Department, during the Revolutionary War, Hazel C Mathews, Fort Myers, Fla ; Printed by Ace Press, 1971
• Biographical sketches of Loyalists in the American Revolution, Gregory Palmer, Meckler Publishing, Westport Connecticut,1984.

External links

• vermonthistory.org page on Samuel Adams with illustration