Talk:James "Grizzly" Adams/First Proposed Revision

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"Grizzly" Adams, with his bear Benjamin Franklin, illustration from 1860.

John "Grizzly" Adams (aka, James Capen Adams, Grizzly Adams) (1812-1860) was a famous California mountain man and trainer of grizzly bears and other wild animals that he captured for menageries, zoological gardens and the circus. When Hittell[1] met John Adams in late 1856 at John's Mountaineer Museum in San Francisco, California, John first represented himself as William Adams,[2] then a short time later told Hittell his name was James Capen Adams; he maintained this alias into 1860. He also told Hittell that he was born on October 20, 1807, in Maine.[3][4]

John did not have a middle name, however, his mother's maiden surname was Capen, and he did have a younger brother who was actually named James Capen Adams.[5][6] This is confirmed and clarified by Dillon[7] and McClung.[8] Information on his Massachusetts death record (Vol. 139, p. 225) also indicates that his name was John and gives an estimated birth year of 1813, based on age at death (48-years). His Find-a-Grave memorial shows his first name to be, John, his birth date October 22, 1812..[9] and his date of death as October 25, 1860, age 48-years.

Early Years[edit]

Born and raised in Medway, Massachusetts,[10] a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, he received an education typical of the era. Adams began as an apprentice in the footwear manufacturing industry at age fourteen. At age twenty-one, he left that occupation and seeking to satisfy his true love - the outdoors and nature -he signed on with a company of showmen as a zoological collector. He hunted and captured live wild animals in the wildest parts of Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, where he honed his woodsman, survival and marksmanship skills. His hunting and trapping career ended abruptly, however, when he received severe back and spine injuries from a Bengal tiger he was attempting to train for his employers.[11][12] Not wanting to become a burden on his family, after recuperating somewhat, he returned to the cobler’s bench. In 1836, John married and sired three children.[13]

"Grizzly" Adams' Death[edit]

In an 1855 grizzly attack, John suffered head and neck injuries. His scalp was dislodged and he had a depression about the size of a silver dollar above his forehead. The wounds healed but the skull indentation remained. He made pets of several grizzlies and often wrestled with them while training them and in exhibitions. His most delinquent grizzly, named General Fremont (for John C. Fremont), during a playful wrestling match, struck Adams in the head, cracking open the previous injury like an eggshell. The wound healed somewhat, only to be reopened by the "General," several times, eventually leaving his brain tissue exposed.

The injury was evidently further aggravated, when a monkey that Adams was attempting to train, bit into the open wound, while Adams was on tour with the circus in New England, in 1860.[14] After more than four-months performing with his California Menagerie in New York City, Connecticut and Massachusetts, complications from the wound eventually lead to Adams' inability to continue on with the show. After completing his contract with P.T. Barnum, he retired to his wife and daughter's home in Neponset, Massachusetts, where he died of his illness (possibly meningitis) five-days after arriving. Upon hearing of Adams' death, Barnum was deeply grieved.

John "Grizzly" Adams was buried in the Bay Path Cemetery, Charlton, Massachusetts. It is said that P. T. Barnum commissioned the creation of his tombstone. Also buried there nearby are his mother, father, a sister, his wife, his son and one of his two daughters.

Media presentations[edit]

Adams was a famed United States outdoorsman, animal collector/trainer and a owner/performer in his own menagerie and later a partner of P. T. Barnum's shows. A biography was published about Adams the year he died,[15] and he was the central character in Charles E. Sellier's 1972 novel The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams. As a character in film and television, Adams has been played by:

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Hittell 1860
  2. ^ Daily Alta
  3. ^ Hittell 1911, p. 1
  4. ^ Dillon, pp. 9-12
  5. ^ Hayden, pp. 155-156
  6. ^ Adams, p 569
  7. ^ Dillon, pp. 9-12
  8. ^ McClung, pp. 11 and 192
  9. ^ "John "Grizzly" Adams". Find A Grave.
  10. ^ Hayden, ibid.
  11. ^ Hittell 1911, pp.1-3
  12. ^ Dillon, p. 24
  13. ^ Adams, p. 661
  14. ^ Hutching's
  15. ^ Hittell 1860

References[edit]

  • Adams, Andrew, N. A Genealogical History of Henry Adams, of Braintree, Mass., and his Descendants: also John Adams of Cambridge, Mass., 1632-1897. : Rutland, VT : Tuttle Co., 1898.
  • Dillon, Richard The Legend of Grizzly Adams: California's Greatest Mountain Man, New York : Coward-McCann, 1966.
  • Hayden, Rev. Charles Albert, Edited and revised by Tuttle, Jessie Hale The Capen Family, Descendants of Bernard Capen of Dorchester, Mass. : Minneapolis : Augsburg Publ. Co., 1929.
  • Hittell, Theodore H. The Adventures of James Capen Adams, Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter, of California, San Francisco : Towne & Bacon, 1860.
  • Hittell, Theodore H. The Adventures of James Capen Adams, Mountaineer and Grizzly Bear Hunter, of California New Edition, New York : Charles Scribner and Sons, 1911.
  • Hutching's California Magazine, No. 52, Vol V, No. 4, San Francisco : Hutchings and Rosenfield, October 1860.
  • McClung, Robert M. The True Adventures of Grizzly Adams, A Biography, New York : Wilson Morrow and Co., Inc., 1985.

External links[edit]

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