Adams Family Who's Who
For details
either click on a face in the picture or on the
name below
Albert, 1884 - 1943
Son of
William & Rebecca. Went to USA and ran the Derryvale Linen Co's office there
at 20, East 22nd Street, New York. His first wife, Florence, ran off
with another bloke. Albert sued him for 'alienation of affection'
and won £10,000, a huge sum then. Later, he married Sherwood, a Christian Scientist.
A good marketer, amongst Albert's promotions were advertisements in
women's magazines and a book ' How to Set the Table for Every
Occasion - With Some Facts About the Irish Linen Country & the
Proper Care of Linens' by one, Sara Swain Adams (Sherwood,
perhaps?) and published in 1921 by the Derryvale Linen Co, New York.
He seems to have been a bit
of a playboy and enjoyed the
good life. The company did well in the USA between the Wars but when
the Depression came, linen sales declined. Albert and Sherwood
returned to Belfast in 1939 at the outbreak of WWII. Sherwood
lived into her 80s in Belfast and, generously, left her money to the
family's various younger generation women, including Louise (my
mother), Joan, Kay, Margaret and Barbara (I think)
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Ernest, 1886 - c.1960
Son of William & Rebecca. The family's Black Sheep. Seems to
have been of independent mind. Lived (on an allowance)
in London and rarely visited Belfast. Apparently he was charming and
good fun and usually short of cash.
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Margaret (Greta or Toutie), 1883 - 1973
Daughter of William & Rebecca. Also, unusually, my Grandmother - she
married Sam Baird, my Da's Da. Because Greta and James Adams were
brother and sister, that made my mother (Christine Louise Adams) and
my father (Donald William Baird) first cousins, which in those days
was not exactly encouraged because it was thought the blood lines
were too close... probably accounts for any peculiarities we may
have. In fact, science now says there's no problem at all - provided
you don't keep doing it in every generation. If you do, you may end up like the
British Royal Family. Come to think of it, they're the wealthiest people
in Britain, so perhaps a little intermarriage isn't all bad.
Although she doesn't look it here, Greta was a bit of a party girl,
enjoyed the odd drink and a lively social life. Which is why,
possibly, she married Grandpa Sam Baird, who was... shall we say,
not really cut out for a life of hard work, much preferring a jar
and a bit of a 'crack' in the pub with his friends (no, it's NOT
spelt 'craic' and it's not an Irish word. English: to crack a joke?
OK? In fact, 'Craic' is a completely made-up word,
invented by the Irish Tourist Board in deference to gross and ignorant American tourists who
apparently think crack is something entirely different - and I don't
mean a drug) My last memory of Toutie, was of a small family group, Father over from New
Zealand, Pamela, Uncle Alan, Toutie and me seated in the lobby of
the Gresham Hotel, Dublin. Toutie, aged 80, sat sipping her
drink and trying to convince me that a priest at the next table was
giving her the eye. There were a lot of priests in Dublin's hotels
in the 1960s, their regulation transport, black VW beetles, parked
outside. Whether they fancied octogenarian ladies from Belfast is
not known.
Sam
Baird had inherited (I think) a carrier company, James Young & Co,
which made him modestly well-to-do but fairly impoverished when compared to the wealthy Adams clan. I don't think this ever bothered
him too much, but it sure did bother my father, Donald, and was
partly why he headed off to NZ when he was 18, fed up with his
dead-end job in an insurance company and playing the poor relation to his rich
cusses. Those cousins included Ronnie and Joan and his future wife,
my mother, Louise, who was a buxom outdoor girl, keen on horses,
squash and badminton (played for Northern Ireland) and
had been to an exclusive English girl's school, Battle Abbey,
in Sussex, where she painted, played lacrosse and the church organ -
although religion was definitely not her thing. Father went to
Campbell College, Belfast, was none too academic, boxed and played a
little rugby. At that time, Campbell was one of Ireland's leading
public schools.
Sam and
Greta lived off Belfast's Malone Road, before moving to a house on
Princeton Road, Bangor - then, and still today, Bangor's dress circle
(crude estate agent's phrase but describes the place quite well.
At the beginning of WWII, Greta moved to London where she owned a
boarding house in Holland Park. She returned to Belfast after the
War and died in 1973.
James Young & Co had contracts with linen companies and
Gallagher's
Tobacco Company, mainly carting goods to and from the docks. When Sam
died, Greta ran the business until her death in the 1970s, when it
passed to Uncle Allan, my father's elder brother. It was sold in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, Toutie and my
mother never did hit it off so I saw very little of her.
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Rebecca (Dolly),
1888 - 1974
Daughter of William & Rebecca. 'Auntie Dolly' featured large in my
early life, and not always for the good. She could be a bitter old
biddy - although, to give her her due, she enjoyed the odd G&T and
could be good fun on occasion. She became my mother's pal and ally
when she returned from New Zealand in 1946 with yours truly, but she
was a bit of a stirrer, family-wise. She had a daughter, Fay, who was
very withdrawn and had mental health problems due to being born with
a misshapen jaw. Today, Fay would have been operated on at birth and
would have lived a normal life. Dolly married and moved to London when quite young. She returned to Belfast after the War,
a widow with limited means, and lived a
dull sort of life with Fay in a flat on the Malone Road, at the
corner of Eglantine Avenue. A rather sad story.
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William George, 1879 - 1941
Eldest son of William and Sarah. George worked with his father,
William, on the sales side of the business. He married Mina Stafford
(another linen family) and they had a son, Arthur, who failed to
inherit anything but money from his talented father.
Arthur
married Vera and had a daughter, Adrienne. He took over as MD on the death of James
(my grandfather) Not a great business brain, Arthur spent much of his time playing golf at Royal County Down
Golf Club, Newcastle - a very smart club. No ladies were allowed on
the premises, so Vera, when she dutifully called to collect him,
had to sit outside in the car until he and his chums had finished
watering at the 19th.
The
rest of Arthur's time seems to have been spent rowing with other
family members and making reactionary and sometimes amazingly stupid decisions, utterly frustrating
his nephew, Ronnie, who worked under him, and the other
shareholders, who wanted to modernise the business or at least have
it properly managed. Once, briefly, in the early 1950s, the factory had made
candlewick but the fashion for this ugly fabric came
to a sudden end, leaving the warehouse filled with the unlovely
stuff. Candlewick has an odd, raised tuft pattern, like a carpet
someone has shaved bare in patches. Years passed. Then a lone buyer
arrived in Belfast, snapping up whatever candlewick was available.
Arthur held out for a better price, believing, against
all reason, that the long defunct candlewick market would recover. It never did. When the warehouse closed in the
1980s, the place was stacked high with the stuff... So, if
you ever wonder why, sometimes, we Bairds do odd things and don't
seem quite as smart as we might be, blame the Arthur gene.
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Robert James (James), 1881 - 1954
(left, front row)
Son of William &
Rebecca, my Grandpa, known as James, father of Christine Louise (my
Ma), Ronald James (Uncle Ronnie), and Joan (Auntie Joan). A good businessman,
innovative, smart and very keen on technology, James introduced rayon before most had even heard of it.
He loved cars and mechanical
things and had his cars' bodies taken off for renovation each year.
Besotted with his daughetr, Louise (my mother) so says Joan - apparently he almost
bankrupted himself to buy her a trousseau when she married and
left for NZ in 1937 - the linen business at the time was in one of
its periodic depressions and money was tight but James was famous
extravagance, being said to buy things 'by the dozen'.
James
married Sarah (Sally) Henderson (nee Steel), a widow from Ayr. When courting
her, he used to take his car on the ferry to Stranraer so as to take
her for outings. At the time, taking cars from Ireland to Scotland
was almost unheard of and in Ayr he was nicknamed 'the wee mad
Irishman'. One picture shows them, appropriately, at Gretna
Green with his huge touring car and chauffeur. Sarah had been married to a
very bright academic, Dr Henderson, who had a string of degrees. He
had been a Presbyterian minister but left the church saying he
'could not practice what he preached', went back to university and
got a medical degree.
Sarah
had a son by Dr Henderson, Hubert,who lived with James and
Sarah in Belfast. On the outbreak of war in 1939 Hubert volunteered,
as a private soldier, joined the London Irish Rifles, later being
commissioned as a lieutenant. He was killed in Tunisia, North
Africa, on 13 January 1943 at the battle of Two Tree Hill. His body
was never found.
James
and Sarah had three children: Christine Louise (my mother) Ronald
James (Ronnie) and Joan. The
family lived in 'Moyola' in Adelaide Park, Belfast. James eventually
bought a summer house, 'Warrendene', in The Warren, Donaghadee
(still there). During the summer months, the family moved with
maids, dogs, cars, guns, rods etc etc to Donaghadee, where they swam
incessantly, played golf, ate ice cream at The Cabin (Louise for a
dare once ate £1 worth. Ice cream cones then cost 1 penny each and
there were 240 pennies to £1 ...) James went 'to business'
most days by train.
James dominated Ronnie, apparently, but bought him
cars to race, so it can't have all been bad. James flew with Ulster
aviation pioneer, Henry Farman. He toured France in his father's car
at a time when there were very few cars anywhere at all (C. 1910. See the
picture above). And he loved to fish salmon and trout. He had a beat on the river Bann and various vehicles
were used for fishing trips and family holidays at Miss Henry's
farm, near the
Bann or at Port Salen Hotel, Donegall (still there although
rebuilt after a major fire). One
vehicle was a bread van converted into a sort of camper, in which
James would sleep whilst on fishing trips. He also had a Crossley
Tender, used by the servants to carry picnics and transport stuff
between the households. The Crossley was probably ex-War
Department - this sort of truck being used by the infamous Black and
Tans in the 1914-18 period, causing consternation when it first
appeared in one village where a woman ran away screaming, 'The Tans
are back!'
The children were
sent to various boarding schools in England, Louise at the age of 9
- she was 'difficult' apparently, to Wellington School in Ayr and
later to Battle Abbey, in Sussex (on the site of that battle..) In
Ayr, at weekends she stayed with her mother's sister, Auntie Teen(a) Steel at
Clyde House (now council offices or possibly flats on the
extreme southern shore end of Ayr. The Steeles were successful race
horse owners and Clyde House had a yard with stables (and a pet
monkey which died of prosperous poisoning having chewed on some
brass cartridge cases. Moral: never eat bullets) Sarah's. Sarah's
cousin, Finlay Wilson owned Adam Wilson & Sons, still today a major
Scottish timber mill, based in Troon near Ayr and run by Finlay's
son, Hamish. In 1935, with the business suffering from recession,
Joan was withdrawn from boarding school.
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Rebecca (nee Duncan) ? - 1936
My mother's
grandmother. My Great Grandma. She was a Duncan, her family probably
coming from Northern Ireland, but certainly of Scottish descent.
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William Adams, 1849 - 1908
The grand old man
himself. For his life story click here
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Mary
Isabella (Minnie), 1880 - 1960
Daughter of
William and Rebecca. Minnie married George McKee and had two
daughters. Marjorie, who married John Bristow and had a son,
Colin, and a daughter, Barbara, who married an Australian,
Phil Pearson, a Royal
Australian Navy commander who started a Pepsi-cola bottling plant in
Coleraine and drove a Jaguar XK150. They lived in a lovely old
farmhouse near Castlerock, Co Londonderry and had a son, Rodger.
Minnie, like the other daughters of the family, had sold her shares
in the business to the other family members and George, who may well
also have had money of his own, invested astutely.
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