James Adams
Mayor of Oxford 1804/5 and 1819/20
James Adams (1760–1829) was the son of Thomas Adams, a cook of the University of Oxford. His father was already dead when on 6 June 1774 Adams was apprenticed for seven years to Richard Holloway, an Oxford upholsterer.
On 12 February 1782 Adams, described as being of St Mary the Virgin parish in Oxford, married Sarah Day of Tything, Over Norton at Chipping Norton.
Jackson’s Oxford Journal reports that in 1782 James Adams, "upholder, appraiser, and auctioneer" took on the shop and business of Philip Ward in Oxford’s High Street, opposite All Souls College in the parish of St Mary the Virgin (probably 90 High Street, left). The following September Adams sold off Alderman Ward’s furniture and stock.
Adams was selected as Mayor’s Child by the new Mayor, William Fletcher, on 30 September 1782, and he immediately took up his Chamberlain’s place on the Council. On 9 October that year he took on Daniel Evans as an apprentice upholsterer.
Adams and his wife Sarah baptised the following children:
- Charles (born 10 April 1786, baptised at at St Mary the Virgin Church on 18 April 1786)
- Sarah I (born 10 January 1897, baptised at St Mary the Virgin Church on 15 January 1789, died aged six months)
- Harriet (born 14 March 1790, baptised at St Mary the Virgin Church on 16 March 1790)
- Sarah II (born 25 March 1792, baptised at St Mary the Virgin Church on 1 April 1792)
- Eliza (born 14 March 1797, baptised at St Mary the Virgin Church on 20 March 1797, died aged two weeks)
- Elizabeth (born 7 December 1798, baptised at St Mary the Virgin Church on 16 December 1798, died aged two months).
Left: diamond-shaped floor stone in the Church of St Mary the Virgin in memory of Sarah, daughter of James and Sarah Adams, who died at the age of six months in 1789
Adams took on John Horn as an apprentice in 1789 and William Strainge in 1795.
In September 1795 Adams was elected Senior Bailiff. He was elected for a first term as Mayor in 1804.
Adams was highly esteemed by his fellow freemen, and in December 1817 was presented with plate inscribed as follows:
Presented to James Adams, Esq by the independent Freemen of the City of Oxford, to testify their personal attachment to him, and to communicate their gratitude for his constant exertions to maintain the rights & privileges of his fellow citizens."
Adams was elected Mayor a second time in 1819, and was made an Alderman in 1825.
On 17 September 1829 Adams (then the Senior Member of the Corporation) died at the age of 71 "after a lingering and most painful illness" and was buried at St Mary the Virgin Church on 26 September 1829.
Adams’s family
- Adams’s wife remained in their High Street home where she died at the age of 83. She was buried with him on 20 April 1838.
- Robson’s Commercial Directory of 1839 lists C. J. Adams (probably Adams' son Charles (born 1786) as an Upholsterer & Auctioneer at 90 High Street
See also:
- Malcolm Graham, Oxford City Apprentices 1697–1800, entries numbered 2506, 2732, 2864, and 3051
- Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 19 September 1829, p. 3b: Announcement of Adams’s death with short obituary
- PCC Will PROB 11/1770 (Will of James Adams, Alderman of Oxford, proved 20 May 1830)