John Adams

1. Only managed 7 generations on the Adams side (back to Walter Adams) and 7 generations on the Graham side - not helped by having no centralised Scottish records prior to 1855. Would have to start scouring through (for example) individual parish records. However, have determined that the Adams’ were Irish Catholic who moved to Scotland to escape the Irish potato famine of 1845-1851. Walter Adams (an Agricultural Labourer) is seen in the Scottish Census of March 1851 living on his own as a lodger in Doune. His wife and 4 children (all Irish) must have followed soon after, and then they had two children (Bridget and Joseph) born in Scotland in 1855 and 1857. They were working in cotton mills from the age of 10!

2. Walter Adams (my grandfather) joined up with the Black Watch on 18/01/1900 after the Boers declared war in late 1899. There are considerable discrepancies in his birth date, with his birth and death registrations indicating late 1872, but with other records (eg. Army and Census) indicating 1877. He signed up for 1 year with the Royal Highlanders, 42nd and 73rd Foot. His service number was 7582. There is a wonderful photo of him in the Black Watch uniform attached. He married Margaret Graham in 1903. I remember being told there was some controversy at the time as he was Catholic and she was Protestant! On their marriage certificate it states it was done in accordance with the Catholic Banns. Walter Adams was the grandson of the Irish Walter and the son of John Adams, who was born in Ireland and would have been about 3 or 4 when they fled to Scotland.

3. Jessie Smith Adams, Margaret Graham Adams & Annie McKenzie Adams were my Dad’s older sisters born between 1905 and 1910. Walter Adams was born in 1917 then my Dad and his younger sister (Ellen) were born after WW1. Smith, Graham and McKenzie are carry-over surnames from parents and grandparents. Jessie Smith was their maternal grandmother.

4. Jessie Adams was a schoolteacher who married in 1937 at the relatively late at the age of 32 to John D R Highet, a First Officer in the Mercantile Marine. Their son John was my first cousin and his two children Alistair and Jennifer my second cousins. Jennifer visited Adelaide in the early 1990’s after a stint at the Darwin Hospital as part of her medical studies (graduated in 1995). Unfortunately, during the course of putting this document together, I found out that both her brother Alistair and her husband Nigel (also a doctor) died within a few months of each other in 2013. I have lost all contact with the Scottish side of the family, although I do believe I have found Jennifer’s address.  My Aunt Jessie Adams (Highet) was Jennifer’s Grandmother and Walter Adams her Great Grandfather.

5. My father, Robert Graham Adams (an apprentice draftsman at the time), enlisted into the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (later to become the Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers) in May 1939, a month before his 19th birthday. He was embodied the day after Germany invaded Poland on 1st September, 1939. He was in the British Expeditionary Force in France from January to May, 1940 when he was injured after crashing his motorbike into a tree in the retreating convoy. He spent a month in hospital in Birmingham before taking a train home to Scotland for R&R. It was on this train he met my mother to be, Gladys Ilene Hutchinson, who was catching the same train from London, getting off in Newcastle. He then served in the Middle East (Egypt and what is now Israel) from July 1941 to August 1945.

6. Bob and Ilene married in 1946 in Gateshead and lived in Bonnybridge. He worked as a draftsman for Allied Iron Founders Ltd, of Falkirk. They emigrated to Sydney, leaving London in May 1952. They returned briefly to Britain, where Graham (d. January 2014) was born in Birmingham in August 1955, before shipping to Melbourne in March 1956. They eventually arrived in Adelaide in February 1959. His sister Ellen and husband and two children moved to Melbourne in 1956. Their youngest son, Kevin, was killed in a car crash around 1973.

7. The most famous of Clan Graham was James Graham (1612-50), the 1st Marquis of Montrose. He was brought up at Kincardine Castle and succeeded his father as 5th earl of Montrose, on November 14, 1626. The present-day 8th Duke of Montrose is also James Graham, (b. 6 April 1935).