THE NEW YORK Genealogical and Biographical Record. VOL. XII. NEW YORK, JANUARY, 1881. No. I. REV. WILLIAM ADAMS, D.D., IN MEMORIAM. (With Portrait). BY REV. EBENEZER P. ROGERS, D.D. (Read before the New York Historical Society November 2, 1880.) IT has been no less truly than beautifully said, that "it is one of the finest instincts of our nature which prompts us to honor the dead." And, that "while the palace may be envied, and the hovel may be scorned, the grave is alike revered, whether adorned with sculptured marble, or decked with a simple flower." Many hands will unite in rearing the "sculptured marble" above the tomb of William Adams. It will be ours to lay with trembling but loving fingers a "simple flower" upon his honored grave. He belonged to a family distinguished for generations for learning, patriotism, and religion. Two Presidents of this Republic, John and John Quincy Adams, with him were descended from Henry Adams, of Devonshire, England, who, we are told was driven from his native land in 1632 by persecution, and who settled in the town of Braintree, Mass. When the war for American independence broke out, John Adams, the grandfather of William, was an officer in the American army from the town of Canterbury, Conn. His son John was educated at Yale College, where he graduated in 1795, a classmate of Jeremiah Day, long the honored president of that venerable university, and he was the father of the subject of the present memorial. John Adams became one of the most distinguished educators of his day, remarkable for his love of letters, his thorough scholarship, and his zeal and success in the high calling to which his life was devoted. For many years he was at the head of one of the most celebrated of the institutions of New England, Philipps Latin Academy, Andover, Mass., where he won both for himself and for the institution a high classical reputation, which was acknowledged by Yale College, in the conferring upon him the title of LL.D. in 1854. He lived to the advanced age of ninety-one years, spending the last thirty years in the State of Illinois, where he devoted twenty years to the establishment of Sunday-schools for |