The History of Bessie Ethyl Adams

Today, I wish to begin the series that will speak to the children of Horace Greeley and Mabel Gertrude (Warren) Adams, early and historically prominent pioneers in the Maple Hill Community.

Bessie Ethyl Adams was the first child of Horace G. and Mabel Gertrude (Warren) Adams and was born on March 30, 1886 in the home of her paternal grandparents, Alexander and Mary Jane (Porter) Adams. We know this because the Kansas Agricultural Census taken the next year records that Horace G., Mabel, and little Bessie were living with Alexander and Mary Jane Adams. The H. G. Adams frame home, on the Adams Ranch Headquarters, was completed between 1886 and 1890 but the exact date is not known. Family members report that Bessie was called Bess most of the time, but the name given her when she was christened was recorded by the Maple Hill Community Congregational Church when her parents presented her for baptism at the Old Stone Church in a service conducted by the Rev. W. S. Crouch.

Bess Adams did not attend the old Maple Hill District #39 one room school house just across the road from her grandparents farm home, but instead attended the newly constructed Maple Hill Elementary School in the newly organized town of Maple Hill, about three-quarters mile southwest of her fathers home. This school was constructed the year the town was founded, 1887, by the towns founder, George Anderson Fowler, owner of the Fowler Ranch and part owner of the Fowler Brothers Packing Company in Kansas City, Kansas. Fowler also gave land and money to build a new Methodist Episcopal Church in the west central portion of his new town, but the Adams Family had joined the Eliot Congregational Church (The Old Stone Church) in 1880 and they remained members. This was mostly because the Warren Family were charter members of the church and Mabel G. Adams parents, Benjamin and Gertrude (Olney) Warren were a part of that extended Warren Family.

I have not been able to learn where Bess Adams attended high school and college, but there survives a photograph of her college graduation photograph indicating that she was a college graduate.
Bess Adams married John Ernest Robert. Their marriage joined two of the most illustrious ranching families in the history of the old West. Books have been written about the history of cattle ranching, and I wont begin to attempt such an undertaking here. I will end this portion of the story, to provide a little of the history of the Robert family prior to John Ernest Roberts marriage to Bessie Ethyl Adams. To do that, I will post a separate account of the Robert and Chisum Families taken from a Kansas history text published in 1919.

Photo 1 – This is a picture postcard of the Horace and Mabel Adams home northeast of Maple Hill, Kansas. The post card stamp was canceled in 1909. This would have been Bessie Adams’ first home.

Photo 2 – The graduation photograph of Bessie Ethyl Adams.

Photo 3 – An early photograph of Bessie Ethyl Adams.

I wish to thank Brinton Webb Woodward Jr. for providing Photo 2 and 3. Photo 1 is from the author’s collection.