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Adams County is a county in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Its county seat is Friendship. The county was created in 1848 and organized in 1853. Sources differ as to whether its name is in honor of the second president of the United States, John Adams, or his son, the sixth president of the United States, John Quincy Adams.
The founders of Adams County were from upstate New York. These people were "Yankee" settlers, that is to say they were descended from the English Puritans who settled New England in the 1600s. They were part of a wave of New England farmers who headed west into what was then the wilds of the Northwest Territory during the early 1800s. Most of them arrived as a result of the completion of the Erie Canal and the end of the Black Hawk War. They got to what is now Adams County by sailing up the Wisconsin River from the Mississippi River on small barges which they constructed themselves out of materials obtained from the surrounding woodlands. When they arrived in what is now Adams County there was nothing but dense virgin forest, the "Yankee" New Englanders laid out farms, constructed roads, erected government buildings and established post routes. They brought with them many of their Yankee New England values, such as a passion for education, establishing many schools as well as staunch support for abolitionism. They were mostly members of the Congregationalist Church though some were Episcopalian. Due to the second Great Awakening some of them had converted to Methodism and some became Baptist before moving to what is now Adams County.
In the late 1880s, German immigrants began to settle in Adams County, making up less than one out of thirty settlers in the county before this date. Generally there was little conflict between them and the "Yankee" settlers, however when conflict did arise, it focused around the issue of prohibition of alcohol. On this issue, the Yankees were divided and the Germans almost unanimously were opposed to it, tipping the balance in favor of opposition to prohibition. Later the two communities would be divided on the issue of World War I in which, once again, the Yankee community would be divided and the Germans were unanimously opposed to American entry into the war. The Yankee community was generally pro-British, however many of the Yankees also did not want America to enter the war themselves. The Germans were sympathetic to Germany and did not want the United States to enter into a war against Germany, but the Germans were not anti-British. Prior to World War I, many German community leaders in Wisconsin spoke openly and enthusiastically about how much better America was than Germany, due primarily (in their eyes) to the presence of English law and the English political culture the Americans had inherited from the colonial era, which they contrasted with the turmoil and oppression in Germany which they had so recently fled.
Adjacent Counties
- Wood County
- Portage County
- Waushara County
- Marquette County
- Columbia County
- Sauk County
- Juneau County
Cities, Villages, Towns & Communities
Adams | Adams Center | Arkdale | Big Flats | Big Springs | Brooks | Brookside | Colburn | Cottonville | Davis Corners | Dell Prairie | Dellwood | Easton | Fordham | Friendship (County Seat) | Grand Marsh | Jackson | Lake Arrowhead | Lake Camelot | Lake Sherwood | Leola | Lincoln | Monroe | Monroe Center | New Chester | New Haven | New Rome | Pilot Knob | Plainville | Preston | Quincy | Richfield | Roche a Cri | Rome | Springbluff | Springville | Strongs Prairie | White Creek | Wisconsin Dells (part)
Cemeteries
Links
Adams County Historical Society
