Biographical Note
John Adair was born in White Hall, Kentucky in 1808, the youngest of eleven children of General John Adair (Senior) and Anna Palmer Adair. When the younger John Adair was a young boy, his father served as Governor of Kentucky.
He married Ann C. Dickinson in 1834 and the couple would have thirteen children over the next twenty-two years. Later, John Adair decided to free all of his slaves and move his family to Indiana.
They suffered the loss of three of their children while in Indiana and left the state in 1848. In that year President Polk appointed
John to the post of Customs Collector in the Port of Astoria, Oregon. The family sailed from New Orleans in December of 1848 on a lengthy journey to Oregon that took them, via Panama, to San Francisco. From San Francisco they
sailed to the mouth of the Columbia River. The family moved into a permanent home in 1849 and Adair retained his post through the administrations of Polk, Taylor, Pierce and Buchanan. He died in April of 1888. Mary Ann Adair died
in May 1893. The information in this typescript was collected primarily through the efforts of Laura P. Barker, the twelfth child of John and Mary Ann Adair.
Content Description
The typescript contains 180 pages and is divided into several sections dealing with particular aspects of the Adair family history.
These include dictated reminiscences of John and Mary Ann Adair, biographical information and letters written by Mrs. Adair while en
route to Astoria by sea in 1848, and from Astoria 1849-1852.
Use of the Collection
Restrictions on Access Collection is open to the public.
Collection must be used in Special Collections & University Archives Reading Room.
Restrictions on Use Property rights reside with Special Collections & University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries.
Copyright resides with the creators of the documents or their heirs.
All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted to the
Manuscripts Librarian in Special Collections & University Archives. The
reader must also obtain permission of the copyright holder.
Preferred Citation [Identification of item], Adair Family Reminiscences, CB Ad11, Special Collections & University Archives, University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene, Oregon.