GEORGE K. ADAMS, ENS, USN

From USNA Virtual Memorial Hall
George Adams '68

Date of birth: 1849

Date of death: January 24, 1870

Age: ~20

Naval Academy Register

George Kossuth Adams was admitted to the Naval Academy from Syracuse, New York on August 1, 1864 at age 15 years 9 months.

Naval Academy Photo Album

1868 Adams 1.jpg

Prior to the publication of the Lucky Bag in 1894, most portraits of officers and midshipmen of the Naval Academy were captured in yearly photo albums. The album for 1868 is available in the collections of the Naval Academy's Digital Collections.

Special thank you to historian Kathy Franz for identifying this resource and then extracting several dozen photographs for this site.

1868 Adams 1.jpg

Prior to the publication of the Lucky Bag in 1894, most portraits of officers and midshipmen of the Naval Academy were captured in yearly photo albums. The album for 1868 is available in the collections of the Naval Academy's Digital Collections.

Special thank you to historian Kathy Franz for identifying this resource and then extracting several dozen photographs for this site.

Loss

George was lost on January 24, 1870 when USS Oneida was sunk following a collision with a British merchant steamer while departing Yokohama harbor, Japan. One hundred twenty-four other officers and men were also lost.

A detailed account of the event is available here.

From researcher Kathy Franz:

George was actually from Syracuse, New York. His father Elisha had died September 27, 1852, and his mother Polly Ann ran a boarding house for many years on Warren Street. She received a naval widow's pension of $12/month. His brother Samuel was a post office clerk, and his sister Mary lived in Buffalo with her husband. Polly Ann also raised an orphan girl, and Elizabeth Leach was noted in the 1880 census as Polly's companion.

Career

From the Naval History and Heritage Command:

Midshipman, 1 August, 1864. Graduated 2 June, 1868. Lost on board Oneida, 24 January, 1870.

Remembrances

From the Marysville Daily Appeal, 24 March 1870, via the records of the US Naval Academy Alumni Association:

The Officers of the Oneida. Below we give sketches of some of the officers who perished in the ill-fated Oneida:

MIDSHIPMAN G. K. ADAMS was a resident of Albany, N. Y., occupied a fine position in his class, and was esteemed by all who knew him. The other officers who lost their lives were highly valued in the navy, and were selected by the department for the East India service because of their peculiar fitness in latitudes most dangerous to the mariner.

Navy Directories & Officer Registers

The "Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps" was published annually from 1815 through at least the 1970s; it provided rank, command or station, and occasionally billet until the beginning of World War II when command/station was no longer included. Scanned copies were reviewed and data entered from the mid-1840s through 1922, when more-frequent Navy Directories were available.

The Navy Directory was a publication that provided information on the command, billet, and rank of every active and retired naval officer. Single editions have been found online from January 1915 and March 1918, and then from three to six editions per year from 1923 through 1940; the final edition is from April 1941.

The entries in both series of documents are sometimes cryptic and confusing. They are often inconsistent, even within an edition, with the name of commands; this is especially true for aviation squadrons in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Alumni listed at the same command may or may not have had significant interactions; they could have shared a stateroom or workspace, stood many hours of watch together… or, especially at the larger commands, they might not have known each other at all. The information provides the opportunity to draw connections that are otherwise invisible, though, and gives a fuller view of the professional experiences of these alumni in Memorial Hall.

July 1868
Midshipman, waiting orders
January 1869
Midshipman, Asiatic Squadron

Related Articles

Edward Williams '53, William Stewart '61, John Phelan '66, Charles Brown '67, James Cowie '67, Charles Copp '68, James Hull '68, William Uhler '68, and George Bower '68 were also lost aboard Oneida.


Class of 1868

George is one of 11 members of the Class of 1868 on Virtual Memorial Hall.

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