Alexander Adams

Family sources (from descendants of his son James) say that Alexander Adams was a farmer, originally from Dublin. We know, however, from baptism records of his first four children, that he was a clerk and school master at Rutland, in the Parish of Urglin, a rural area about two miles east of Carlow. The family lived at Rutland School. As clerk in Urglin church, he sometimes signed as witness to a marriage (three examples can be seen - see Urglin marriages document under sources tab).

In 1831 he married Edith ANDERTON in the Diocese of Ossory (see sources) and their daughter Sarah was born the following year.

It seems he may also have been a Doctor of Divinity, because the death announcement of his daughter, Eliza Feltus Hare, said she was "third daughter of the late Alexander Adams, D.D., The Priory, Thomastown, County Kilkenny."

It's not known who was Alexander's father, but E F Adams in his article (see below) rather cryptically says that when Alexander's widow Edith visited her son James and his wife on the Isle of Man, she might have done a bit of name-dropping, including "a yarn covering the conferment of the Freedom of the City of Dublin on her husband's father (or grandfather as may be) by a grateful city council."

The list of marriages in the Diocese of Ossory (see sources) provides new clues to his possible parentage. An Alexander ADAMS married Sarah FELTUS in 1798. Our Alexander ADAMS might have been their first son, born perhaps around 1800 (we know from family anecdotes that he died before his time). This would certainly explain the middle name Feltus that passed down through his children, and might explain why his first daughter was named Sarah.

James was the last of Alexander's children whose baptisms were recorded in Carlow, in 1839, and records haven't survived of subsequent baptisms after the family moved to Kells, near Thomastown. We know from an article [Auckland-Waikato Historical Journal No.61, Sep 1992] written by his grandson, Ernest Feltus Adams, that there were seven children: "James was the middle child of a family of seven, being preceded by three girls and followed by a boy, a girl, and finally by a boy... The youngest child was born in 1847."

'The Priory' might have been Kells Priory. His daughter Anne was married in Kells in 1862 and her children were born there too.

Alexander died when his eldest daughter was 17 and James was in his 10th year (according to E F Adams in the above-mentioned article). This would have been 1849.