Austin Adams - Youth

Youth

Austin Adams was born to Jerry and Dorcas Austin on May 24, 1826, in Andover, Vermont, a country village. His grandparents had secured that school and a church on a corner of their farm in 1794. He retained pleasant memories of the district school, which he attended until he was fourteen. In later years he wrote " older pupils, the young men and women not only assisted me in my studies, but their presence and example afforded me inspiration." His family attended the Baptist church on their farm. Adams heard only "dogmatic and terrorizing theology" at the church and it "succeeded in destroying much of the happiness of his childhood."

He showed great interest in law as a boy: "The law had a perfect fascination for me before I was ten years old, and I think before I ever saw a lawyer or a court." He often went to the court house in Woodstock, Vermont to listen to cases.

At age thirteen, his teacher urged his father to give Austin a better education than he could receive at the country school house. At fourteen he was sent to Black River Academy in Ludlow, Vermont, to prepare for college. At age sixteen he began teaching students at the academy, some of whom were older than he was, in the winter while working on his father's farm in the summer.

At nineteen he entered the sophomore class at Dartmouth College; he graduated in 1848. Lighting then was so poor that he lost some of his vision studying, and had to wear spectacles at an early age. "The physical inability to see distinctly increased an introspective state of mind and somewhat blunted the observing powers which he himself regretted."

For the next five years he taught at West Randolph Academy in West Randolph, Vermont, while pursuing his legal studies. Teaching at the academy "perfect his classical studies." He attended Harvard Law School for a short time in 1853. He was admitted to the bar in Woodstock, Vermont, in January 1853 and entered practice with ex-Governor Carlos Coolidge.