"Adams Choice," Conewago Township, Pennsylvania

Maria Storm married Jacob Adams, the son of an Englishman. His family had lived for generations in a lovely portion of the Midlands called Shropshire, but you can’t eat even the prettiest landscape. Today Shropshire is officially touted as having “hills of outstanding beauty,” but that’s just Chamber of Commerce-type poppycock. It’s still a rural, sparsely populated backwater. Its official flower is the round-leafed sundew, which grows in bogs and eats bugs.

Bogs. Carnivorous plants. Abysmal poverty. Whee.

Photo by Jan Raes

Jacob’s grandfather William had been born in 1700, and his grandmother Jane first saw light in a soggy bit of Shropshire called Waters Upton in 1708. His father Thomas (born 1735) crossed over to the colonies looking for a more prosperous life. He found it, and a German-born bride named Magdalena, in Pennsylvania. He was only nineteen, and she about thirteen years older when they wed. But Magdalena proved to be one tough cookie, and I’m proud to be her offshoot.

Thomas Ignatius Adams was no slouch himself. In 1756, when he was 21, he purchased 118 acres of prime Conewago Township land that became known as “Adams Choice.” First he built his family a log cabin, and eventually replaced it with a brick farmhouse. He and Magdalena provided their nine children with at least eight beds, cooked their meals on two five-plate iron stoves, and had a “Walnut Dyning Table” to sit their pewter dinnerware on. For special occasions, food was served in “Delf Bowls” (from the Netherlands); when not in use, the crockery was stored in a corner “cubart.” They also had a clock, a looking glass, and a few books.

The farm itself flourished: Fields waving with wheat, barley and rye, and pastures supporting 11 horses, 25 cows, two steers, three bulls, 28 sheep, four lambs and 10 shoats.

The new land was good to Thomas, and he loved it enough to fight for it. Old records credit him with both “Provincial and Revolutionary Service”. According to the National Archives, Captain Adams served in one of the ”Three Independent Companies and First Regiment of Maryland Regulars in the Service of the United Colonies commanded by Colonel Smallwood in September and October 1776.”

Alas, Thomas’s career as a Patriot was short. He died on 5 December 1776. Was he wounded in action? Did he die from a farm accident, or merely catch a bad cold? I can’t find his cause of death anywhere.

This Shropshire-born man’s slate tombstone was, oddly, inscribed in German. I suppose Magdalena wanted to remind her Germanic neighbors of her late husband’s piety. This is an English translation of his epitaph: Now my struggle has come to an end. My run is complete. I go to my Jesus and say to you all good night.