Adelbert Ames - Later Life

Later Life

After leaving office, Ames settled briefly in Northfield, Minnesota, where he joined his father and brother in their flour-milling business. During his residence there, in September 1876, Jesse James and his gang of former Confederate guerrillas raided the town's bank, largely because of Ames's (and controversial Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler's) investment in it, but failed in their attempt to rob it. Ames next headed to New York City, then later settled in Tewksbury, Massachusetts as an executive in a flour mill, along with other business interests in the nearby city of Lowell.

In 1898, he was appointed brigadier general of volunteers in the Spanish-American War and fought in Cuba. Several years afterward, he retired from business pursuits in Lowell but continued in real-estate and entertainment projects in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Florida. Ames corresponded extensively with the historian James Wilford Garner during this period; Garner's dissertation viewed Reconstruction as "unwise," but absolved Ames of personal corruption. Ames's widow compiled a collection of her correspondence with Ames, Chronicles from the Nineteenth Century, published posthumously in 1957.

Ames died in 1933 at the age of 97 in his winter home, located in Ormond Beach, Florida, next to the former Southern plantation which had been seized by his friend John D. Rockefeller. At the time of his death, Ames was the last surviving general who had served in the Civil War. Ames is buried in the Hildreth family cemetery—the family of his mother-in-law, Sarah Hildreth Butler—behind the main cemetery (also known as Hildreth Cemetery) on Hildreth Street in Lowell. Buried with him are his wife Blanche Butler Ames, their six children, and the spouses of his son Butler and his daughter Edith.