Appalachian Figures
When George Madison Adams died in Winchester, Kentucky, in April 1920, he left behind a mountain story that reached far beyond the hills where it began. Born in Barbourville in 1837, he grew up in a small Appalachian county seat, went to war as a Union officer, served four terms in Congress, and then spent much of Reconstruction as Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives.
His life looked, on the surface, like a classic tale of ambition and public service. Yet the paper trail from Barbourville courthouses, Civil War rosters, congressional records, and grave markers reveals a more complicated figure. He came from a slaveholding family in Knox County, fought for the Union, aligned with the Democratic Party, and helped manage the machinery of Congress at the height of Reconstruction.
This is an effort to sketch George Madison Adams’s story from the surviving primary sources and the best modern reference works, with particular attention to his Appalachian roots.
Barbourville Beginnings
George Madison Adams was born 20 December 1837 in Barbourville, the seat of Knox County in southeastern Kentucky. His official congressional biography and modern reference tools like the Quill Project agree on the basic outline. He attended local schools, spent roughly two years studying law at Centre College in Danville without taking a degree, and returned home to work in the courthouse. By 1859 he was clerk of the Knox County circuit court, a position he held until 1861.
To understand the world he grew up in, we have to turn to family recollections. In a memoir of her childhood, his cousin Kate White Adams Milward remembered Barbourville on the eve of the Civil War as a tight little town of roughly three hundred people, ringed by farms and dominated by a handful of interrelated families. Her father, Capt. George Madison Adams, a Barbourville merchant born in 1809, owned about one hundred enslaved people and still cast his lot with the Union when war came.
Later county histories and genealogical compilations tie the younger George to this same world. They place him among the Adams, White, and related families who controlled much of the land and business in and around Barbourville, with kin connections reaching to figures like Green Adams, the congressman and federal official who had already gone from Knox County to Washington in the mid nineteenth century.
A Slaveholding Unionist Family
Kate Milward’s recollections and later research remind us that the Adamses were both Unionist and deeply entangled in slavery. Her account of her father’s household, with roughly a hundred enslaved people, has been confirmed and expanded by Cleveland County level records and by modern editors of her memoir.
The younger George’s own slaveholding is harder to trace in detail, but recent work by the Washington Post on members of Congress who owned enslaved people places him on that list, drawing on census slave schedules and related documents.
This combination was common in parts of Appalachian Kentucky. Families like the Adamses could support the Union, send men into Federal service, and still profit from enslaved labor. For George Madison Adams, that background shaped a career in which he would speak for a mountain district that remained largely white and agrarian while carrying the contradictions of a slaveholding border state into the politics of Reconstruction.
Captain of the Seventh Kentucky
When civil war came in 1861, Adams was a young clerk in the Knox County courthouse. Johnson’s Union Regiments of Kentucky describes how he resigned that office, enlisted as a private in what was first called the Third Kentucky Infantry, and within days was elected captain of Company H. The regiment was soon renumbered as the Seventh Kentucky Infantry, a Union unit recruited largely from Clay, Knox, Laurel, Owsley, and Whitley Counties and organized at Camp Dick Robinson in the fall of 1861.
The same biographical sketch notes that Capt. Adams followed the regiment through its early service, a record that matches the official history of the Seventh. That unit guarded approaches in Rockcastle County, helped hold the Cumberland Gap, and later marched with Federal forces in the western theater, with battles from Chickasaw Bayou to Vicksburg.
Union Regiments and the Kentucky Adjutant General’s Report agree that Adams resigned his captain’s commission in January 1863. The paper trail then picks up in Washington. A War Department general order dated 28 May 1864 lists “George M. Adams, of Kentucky” among those appointed major and paymaster of volunteers, confirming that he returned to service in a financial role and remained in the army until near the end of the war.
It is important not to confuse him with his older relative of the same name. The same volume of Union Regiments carries a separate sketch of Capt. George M. Adams of Barbourville, almost fifty at the outbreak of the war, who was commissioned captain and commissary of subsistence in August 1861 and served on the staff of Gen. George W. Morgan before resigning in 1862 and becoming a Lexington merchant.
The younger George thus belonged to a family where both uncle and nephew held Union commissions: one as commissary and staff officer, the other as line captain and later paymaster. Together they stand as examples of how Knox County’s white elite embraced the Union cause while preserving many of their antebellum hierarchies.
From Barbourville to Congress
Adams carried his wartime reputation and courthouse experience into politics almost as soon as the fighting ended. The Civil War Governors of Kentucky project traces him as a student, clerk, farmer, and officer in its documentary index, then as a Barbourville lawyer returning to civilian life.
The Biographical Directory and the 1869 Congressional Directory agree that he was elected as a Democrat to the Fortieth Congress from Kentucky’s Eighth District in 1866 and then reelected to the Forty first, Forty second, and Forty third Congresses, serving from March 4, 1867 to March 3, 1875.
Printed election tables in the Congressional Directory and in the 1872 World Almanac give a fuller sense of his support at home. One set of returns shows him “of Barboursville” defeating Republican Sidney M. Barnes in the Eighth District by 10,323 votes to 9,861, a majority of roughly four hundred and sixty.
Barnes challenged that result. The House printed the case as “Barnes vs. Adams,” House Miscellaneous Document No. 13 for the Forty first Congress, Second Session. The volume gathers affidavits, local returns, and testimony that scholars now use as a window onto election administration and ballot box disputes in Reconstruction Kentucky. In the end, the Committee on Elections upheld Adams’s claim to the seat.
Contemporary newspapers took notice of the mountain congressman. A sketch in the St. Paul Daily Press in July 1867 introduced him to Minnesota readers as a Knox County Union officer turned representative. Later profiles in the Charlotte Observer and Winchester Times in December 1875 repeated the familiar points: birth in Knox County, education at Centre College, service as captain in the Seventh Kentucky Volunteers and as paymaster, and success at the polls.
A Mountain Democrat in the Age of Reconstruction
Adams sat in the House through some of the most intense battles of Reconstruction politics. Kentucky Democrats generally opposed Radical Republican measures, and while roll call analysis of his individual votes lies beyond this sketch, his party alignment and district suggest that he moved with the conservative wing of the era.
What the sources show clearly is the way he appeared in official directories and almanacs of the time. The Congressional Directory lists him on House committees such as the Post Office and Post Roads, while nineteenth century political almanacs identified him simply as “George M. Adams, of Kentucky,” giving his party, district, and vote totals.
Newspaper coverage framed him as a capable mountain lawyer who had risen through local offices into national life. At the same time, modern datasets on slaveholding remind us that at least some of his wealth rested on human property before the war, even as he fought under the United States flag and later represented a largely pro Union district in Congress.
Clerk of the House
After losing his seat in 1874, Adams did not leave Washington. The House of Representatives elected him Clerk for the Forty fourth Congress and kept him in that position through the Forty fifth and Forty sixth Congresses, which meant he served as Clerk from 1875 to 1881. The official history of the Office of the Clerk and the House History, Art and Archives site both list him in the chronological roster of clerks for those three congresses.
The Clerk’s position gave Adams power beyond what his old district had ever offered. The clerk kept the House’s official journal, attested all writs and subpoenas, certified accounts, and, at the opening of each new House, called the body to order until a Speaker could be elected. Deschler’s Precedents notes that after Speaker Michael C. Kerr died in 1876, it was Clerk George M. Adams who called the House to order at the start of the second session in December of that year.
His name also entered American constitutional law. In the Supreme Court decision Kilbourn v. Thompson, a landmark case on the limits of congressional investigative power, the justices reproduced the text of the warrant by which the House ordered the arrest of Hallet Kilbourn. The warrant closed with a familiar attestation: the speaker’s signature and “GEORGE M. ADAMS, Clerk,” showing his hand on one of the most controversial exercises of investigative authority in nineteenth century congressional history.
Other congressional documents underline his financial responsibilities. An 1878 entry in the Congressional Record preserves a receipt in which “We, the subscribers, acknowledge to have received from George M. Adams, Clerk of the House of Representatives, the sums opposite our names,” a simple but telling reminder that his office served as paymaster for members and staff.
Letters preserved at the Filson Historical Society and in the Mississippi Department of Archives and History show the same man at work in a quieter key. In short notes written from Washington he worries about the timing of a special election to replace a Kentucky colleague, conducts routine business as Clerk, and forwards copies of an act of Congress to the governor of Mississippi. Together they put a human voice to the printed record.
Frankfort, Louisville, and Winchester
When Adams left the Clerk’s office, he shifted back toward state and regional work rather than returning to the practice of law in Barbourville. The Biographical Directory and a GPO compilation of congressional biographies outline his later career. He served as register of the Kentucky land office, then as Kentucky Secretary of State under Governor Simon Bolivar Buckner from 1887 to 1891, then as state railroad commissioner in the early 1890s.
The same sources note that President Grover Cleveland appointed him United States pension agent at Louisville in 1894, a post he held until 1898. In that role he oversaw payments to Union veterans and their families in a region where Civil War memory, Blue and Gray, remained a daily presence.
By the turn of the century he had withdrawn from most public life. Quill Project’s biographical entry summarizes his trajectory in simple terms: lawyer, clerk, soldier, register, secretary of state, railroad commissioner, pension agent, politician. In his final years he lived in Winchester, Clark County, where he died 6 April 1920 at the age of eighty two.
He was buried in Lexington Cemetery. House Divided’s entry on the cemetery and Find A Grave memorials for both father and son place his grave among other notable Kentuckians. The stone is modest, recording his name and dates without mentioning Congress or the Clerk’s office. The Brady Handy portrait preserved in the Library of Congress and widely reproduced through Wikimedia Commons gives us the corresponding face, a bearded Kentuckian in mid life, looking out from the era of Reconstruction.
Remembering George Madison Adams as an Appalachian Figure
George Madison Adams never ranked among the giants of Reconstruction politics. He did not chair a major committee or leave a thick volume of speeches. His importance lies instead in the way his life connects Barbourville’s courthouse square to the floor of the House of Representatives and to the inner workings of Congress itself.
He grew up in a small Appalachian town, in a family that enslaved large numbers of people and that still chose the Union when Kentucky divided. He raised a company of mountain soldiers, marched and paid troops in the western theater, and then carried his local standing into a congressional district that reached across parts of eastern Kentucky.
In Washington he became something rarer still: a mountain Democrat who helped run the House during Reconstruction. As Clerk he called the House to order after the death of a Speaker, attested warrants that landed in the Supreme Court reports, and signed receipts for the very members he had once served alongside. When he went back to Kentucky, he did not retire to Barbourville but remained within the world of state offices and federal appointments, working as land officer, secretary of state, railroad commissioner, and pension agent before finally retreating to a quieter life in Winchester.
For Appalachian history, his story is a reminder that the road from a Knox County crossroads to a desk on the House floor could run through slavery, Union service, contested elections, and back room clerkships. The sources that preserve his life letters from Washington, Civil War rosters, contested election papers, a Supreme Court opinion, county histories, and a weathered stone in Lexington Cemetery show us both the reach and the limits of mountain ambition in the nineteenth century.
Sources & Further Reading
Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition, indexed entry for “George Madison Adams, Jr.,” tracing his appearances as student, clerk, farmer, captain, and major tied to Knox County and the Seventh Kentucky Infantry. test.discovery.civilwargovernors.org
Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kentucky, 1861 to 1866, volume covering the Seventh Kentucky Infantry, Company H, with muster data that confirm Adams’s service and resignation dates. digirepo.nlm.nih.gov
Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument Association, The Union Regiments of Kentucky. Biographical sketches for Capt. George M. Adams and Maj. George M. Adams, detailing the uncle’s service as commissary of subsistence and the nephew’s path from county clerk to captain of the Seventh Kentucky, then major and paymaster and finally congressman and clerk of the House. Internet Archive
War Department, General Orders, 1861 to 1865. Orders appointing “George M. Adams, of Kentucky” as commissary of subsistence with rank of captain and later as additional paymaster and major, confirming the appointments summarized in later biographies. Internet Archive+1
Barnes vs. Adams, Papers in the Contested Election Case of Sidney M. Barnes vs. George M. Adams, in the Eighth Congressional District of Kentucky, House Miscellaneous Document No. 13, Forty first Congress, Second Session. Election returns, affidavits, and other documents relating to the 1868 contest. GovInfo+1
United States Congressional Directory, various editions from the late 1860s and early 1870s. Short biographical sketch “GEORGE M. ADAMS, of Barbourville, Kentucky,” committee assignments, and printed vote totals for his district. GovInfo+1
Congressional Record and related House documents, including the 1878 Senate volume preserving the receipt beginning “We, the subscribers, acknowledge to have received from George M. Adams, Clerk of the House of Representatives” and later references to his role in contested election and investigative proceedings. Congress.gov+1
Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U.S. 168 (1881). Supreme Court opinion on congressional investigative power, reproducing the warrant attested by “GEORGE M. ADAMS, Clerk,” and later historical discussions of the case. ChanRobles Law Firm+1
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, entry “ADAMS, George Madison (A000035).” Standardized biography outlining his birth in Barbourville, Civil War service, congressional terms, clerkship, state offices, and death in Winchester, with burial in Lexington Cemetery. Bioguide+1
U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives, “ADAMS, George Madison” and “Office of the Clerk” pages, including the chronological list of clerks and contextual essays about the duties of the office during the Forty fourth through Forty sixth Congresses. History, Art & Archives+1
“Kate White Adams Milward’s Recollections of Her Early Years,” Kentucky Ancestors 42, no. 1 (2006). Edited memoir with footnotes that supply a mini biography of George Madison Adams Jr., document his dates and offices, and describe his father’s slaveholding and Union service in Barbourville. kyhistory.com
Quill Project (Oxford), entries for “George M. Adams” and the “Kentucky Delegation.” Modern visualization and summary of his role in Reconstruction era constitutional politics, including the Fifteenth Amendment debates, grounded in Bioguide data. quillproject.net
House Divided Project, Dickinson College, photographic and biographical entry on George Madison Adams, keyed to the Brady Handy portrait now in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Wikimedia Commons+1
“George Madison Adams,” Wikipedia, with references to the Washington Post dataset on slaveholding members of Congress and to Union Regiments of Kentucky, used here as a tertiary guide to cross check dates and offices. Wikipedia+1
Lexington Cemetery and Find A Grave memorials for Capt. George Madison Adams (1809 to 1875) and George Madison Adams (1837 to 1920), used to confirm burial locations, kin relationships, and life dates and to distinguish the Barbourville merchant and staff officer from his nephew the congressman. Find a Grave+1