Biography of Tom Adams

Uptime Biography

Backup Biography

George and Maria were married in St. Thomas, British West Indies, in 1769, and lived there until 1772, when they moved to Norfolk County, Virginia.  George fought under Washington, and was at Yorktown when Cornwallis surrendered. After the war, nursing an arm wound that left him unable to farm, he went back to his old profession of smuggling. He and Marie had a son, Thomas Jonathan Adams, in 1784. He was fairly prosperous at the transport business, until he was sunk by a Spanish man of war on his way back from St. Augustine, Florida in 1787. His fortune passed down to his widow and only child, who moved to Vienna in 1788. War broke out in 1792, and Marie and Thomas fled back to Virginia, apparently the only place it was safe. Marie got a job as a teacher of German at the Norfolk Academy, and raised her son in an atmosphere of books. He grew up on tales of his father's exploits in the Revolutionary War and as a smuggler afterwards. When he was 16, Thomas left home to go to sea out of Norfolk, for John Perrot of St. Eustatius.  He was a cabin boy, then crewmember of the Eliza May until he was finally able to command his own ship in 1805. He was sunk off the coast of Malta, and barely made it to shore alive. The British took him in, and were able to furnish him transportation to London, where he lived until 1806. He decided to go back to Virginia, to make a living for himself. When he arrived there, he found out his mother had died of a stroke in 1799, and left him a sizable amount of money, both of hers and her late husband's.

Biography since the arrival