PERRY M. ADAMS, attorney-at-law, Tiffin, and prosecuting attorney for Seneca County, was born in Wood County, Ohio, December 2, 1850, and is the eldest son and second child (of a family of three sons and five daughters). of Harvey and Susannah A. (Phelps) Adams, and is of lineal descent on his father's side, from an old New England family. His great-great-grandfather, Alexander Adams, was of Revolutionary times and a native of New Jersey. His great-grandfather, David Adams, settled in Beaver (now Lawrence) County, Penn., from New Jersey, where his son David, father of Harvey, was raised and married Sarah McKibben, and subsequently, in 1835, moved to Wood County, Ohio, with his family, when Harvey was twelve years of age, and raised a family of seven sons and seven daughters, who (with the exception of three members) reared large families in Wood County. Mrs. Susannah A. (Phelps) Adams, a native of Pennsylvania, was a daughter of Ralph D. Phelps, a farmer of Wood County, Ohio, and a native of Connecticut, and Nancy (Parson) Phelps, a native of Kentucky. The subject of our sketch received a good education in the public schools of his native county and engaged in teaching, in which profession he excelled. He, however, applied himself to further his literary accomplishments, and, being self-dependent, taught while he read law. He attended literary and scientific courses at Fostoria, Ohio, and afterward at Republic, same State. Feeling an "itching palm" for the knowledge of law, he eventually came to Tiffin, this county, and entered the office of the Hon. W. P. Noble (his present partner), March 18, 1874, and on April 13, 1876, was admitted to the bar of Ohio. He immediately accepted a partnership with his worthy preceptor, which has continued without interruption since. In April, 1879, he was chosen solicitor for the city, and re-elected in 1881, resigning, however, in March, 1882, to accept his present incumbency to which he had been elected the preceding October, and to which he was honorably reelected in October, 1884. Mr. Adams married, in Washington, D. C., April 26, 1881, Miss Annie E. Kiskadden. of that city, a lady of excellent literary and musical attainments, and a graduate of Mrs. Willard's College, Now York She is the only daughter of William and Mary E. (Campbell) Kiskadden, the former a native of Ohio, and prominent contractor, now of Denver, Col.; the latter a daughter of Alexander Campbell, a pioneer of Seneca County. Mr. and Mrs. Adams have two children: Eugenia K. and Harvey M. Mr. Adams has taken a prominent place in his profession here for so young a man, and bids fair to be heard from in the councils of the nation in the near future: He is of fine physique, of tall and commanding presence, and eminently fitted, as becomes his character, to dictate rather than accept. He is a worthy member of the Masonic fraternity.


Trancribed by Bonnie Walsh.
WARNER, BEERS & CO., 1886
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, Part IV, p.752-753
SENECA COUNTY,
CLINTON TOWNSHIP AND TIFFIN CITY, OHIO