| Notes |
- The following was written in Yankee Magazine by William Basel. The copy of the article I received did not have a date on it, but it is retyped in its entirety here.
Grizzly Adams roamed the California mountains in the 1850's hunting, capturing, and training bears. He was a shoemaker from Medway, Massachusetts. Although he went by the name of James Capen Adams after he became famous, research suggests
that Grizzly was actually Jame's younger brother, John, who was born in 1812.
Young John Adams loved the outdoors and frequently hunted and trapped animals. He abadoned a wife and three children to head west, which may explain why he used his brother's name later.
Adams got his nickname and his reputation after he killed a female grizzly bear and adopted her cub. He went on to accumulate a menagerie of eagles, cougars, mountain lions, and other animals that he took to San Francisco in 1856, where he
opened a "Mountaineer Museum." Dressed in skins and a hate made from a wolf's head and shoulder, he was as much an attraction as his animals. His beard was white, his hair bushy and gray, and his body was stitched with scars acquired while
training his animals. A blow from a grizzly gave him a fractured skull that never healed properly.
In April of 1860, Adams came back east to run an animal show for P. T. Barnum. Although it was a huge success, his health continued to deteriorate. He sold his animals to Barnum and agreed to undertake one last tour of Connecticut and
Massachusetts. Apparently he hoped to make a little money to leave his wife before his death, which he sensed was imminent.
The tour crisscorssed Connecticut in July, drawing an overflow crowd of 5,000 to New Haven. By mid-August it was in New Bedford, Massachusetts and Adams was failing fast. But P. T. Barnum had promised him a $500 bonus if he finished out the
ten week tour, and Adams was determined to earn it. By the ninth week, in Boston, he was too weak to lead the bears in their opening porcession, but he managed to put them thorugh their tricks for the crowd.
As soon as the ten-week tour was over, Adams collected his bonus and went to his wife's home in Charlton, Massachusetts. There, in October, he died at the age of 48. He was, in his own words, "a used-up man."
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1812 - 1860 (48 years)
