History of Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, 1887



Adams Family - DR. CHARLES MURRAY ADAMS Biography

Dr. Adams, a leading factor in the medical fraternity of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, was born at Scottsburg, New York, October ii, 1859, and comes from the Adams family to which President Adams belonged, and is a descendant of the Monroe, Peck, Otis, Harrison and Hubbard families, all of much prominence in American history. The Adams line runs to him as follows

I. John Adams, born 1745, died February 26, 1849, aged one hundred and four years, one month and four days.

II. James Adams, born June 10, 1779; died April 30, 1855, aged seventy-five years and ten months. For his first wife he married Dolly Dickerson, born September 18, 1779; died January 18, 1818. His second wife was Lucy Sartell, born August 5, 1792; died September 21, 1864, aged seventy-two years.

III. John Sartell Adams, son of James and Lucy Sartell Adams, II, was born March 29, 1820. He married Nancy Peck, who was born February 28, 1825. She descended as follows: Ephraim Harrison, brother to the first President Harrison, had a daughter Hannah, born 1/757, who married Elizabeth Peck, the son of Deacon Paul Peck, born 1608 and died 1695, aged eighty-seven years. He had a son Paul, who died in 1725, who married Elizabeth Bassy. They had a son Paul, who died in 1751, who married Leah Mowry, and they had Thomas Peck, the father of Elijah Peck, born June 24, 1792; died April 12, 1864, aged seventy-five years and ten months. His daughter, Nancy Peck, born February 28, 1825, became the wife of John Sartell Adams, and was the mother of Dr. Adams, of whom this memoir is written.

Dr. Adams' early life was spent on a farm, and in his boyhood days he attended the Harford graded school in Susquehanna county, Pennsylvania, until 1876. He then taught school for several months, after which he pursued a course in the State Normal School at Mansfield, Tioga county, Pennsylvania. From 1879 to 1881 he was again engaged in school teaching, until 1885 was in business life, as an accountant, but finally entered Bellevue Hospital Medical College, now a part of New York University, and was graduated Doctor of Medicine, in March, 1888. Since that date he has been in the active practice of medicine and surgery in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. In April and May, 1899, he took a special course in surgery in the New York Polytechnic. Another school to which he attributes much of his education was that of poverty and hard work, having entered that school, unaided, at the age of seventeen years.

He was elected president of the Lycoming County Medical Society in 1901. He is one of the chief surgeons to the Williamsport Hospital, and a member of the Pennsylvania State Medical Society ; the American Medical Association; medical examiner for the Union Central Life Insurance Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Provident Savings Life Assurance Society, of New York. Politically Dr. Adams has always been a Republican. In religious matters he is a member of the First Baptist Church of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He is a member of Lodge No. 106, Free and Accepted Masons, of Williamsport, and belongs to the Chapter, Council and Commandery, also the Scottish Rite, of Williamsport, having attained the thirty-second degree. He is a member of Irem Temple, A. A. 0. N. M. S., of Wilkes barre. He was married at Mansfield, Pennsylvania, to Miss Emma Ferguson, a student of the State Normal School of that place. She died at Williamsport, April 29, 1901, leaving no children.


Source: Genealogical and Personal History of Lycoming County, John W. Jordan, Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1906.








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