←Back

Ebenezer Adams

Born 4 December 1751 Died 31 January 1846

St. John’s Reformed Church cemetery, Upper Red Hook. A rectangular marble tablet, close to the church and side road.

📖 Download PDF.  🗺️ Find his monument.

Ebenezer Adams lived the majority of his life in Red Hook. According to Adams’s genealogy, compiled by descendant Andrew Napoleon Adams, he was born in Killingly, Connecticut, a village near the mid north-south border with Rhode Island. Adams was one of seven children of Ebenezer (born 1724) and Ruth (Merrill) Adams. The genealogy reports that Adams

“was a soldier in the Revolution; enlisted from Rhinebeck, N.Y., Aug. 8, 1775, in Capt. Henry Livingston’s company of the 4th New York Regiment; is said to have been at Valley Forge, and to have received a pension. He was a “cordwainer,” [a shoemaker] and purchased a house and lot in Red Hook, N.Y. in May, 1806.”

Two of Adams’s relatives also served: his brother-in-law Thomas Pierpoint, husband of Adams’s sister Lodema, was an officer in the Revolution and settled in Ferrisburg, Vermont where he died, and his brother John who served as a soldier for a total of eight days in Windham County, Vermont, and worked as a blacksmith in Arlington, Vermont. In the pensioner list of 1840, Ebenezer is listed as having served in the N. Y. Line 4th Regiment, Dutchess 5th Regiment (Militia), and Dutchess Militia 6th Regiment.

Adams married Elizabeth Martin, daughter of Gotlop (1745-1832) and Ann Katherine (Shoemaker) Martin (1743-1831) who are buried in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Peter cemetery in Rhinebeck. Elizabeth’s brothers Heinrich Gilbert ‘Henry’ Martin (1768-1822) and Capt. John Gottlieb Martin (1771-1822) are both buried at St. John’s where Ebenezer and Elizabeth are also interred.

The couple had four children. David (Oct. 1, 1786-Jan. 3, 1875) married Catherine Moul, the daughter of Frederick Moul. David and Catherine are buried in the cemetery of the West Ghent Reformed Church in Columbia County. Two other sons—William (1789-1810) and Heinrich Gilbert ‘Henry’ (Oct. 1, 1786-Aug. 3, 1864)—and a daughter Ruth (est. 1793-Jan. 31, 1875) are also buried at St. John’s in Upper Red Hook.

We find Adams and his family residing in Rhinebeck in 1800, according to the census of that year, in a household of ten including himself, with seven members under the age of 16. By 1820, Adams and his family had relocated to Red Hook with six family members, and by 1840, there were seven in the household, five of whom were under the age of 20, according to the census; presumably Adams and his wife were the two over the age of  20.

Adams was one of 41 taxpayers listed as contributing to District 6 and supporting the first school built on Cottage Hill in the center of Upper Red Hook about 1813, according to Roger Leonard’s Upper Red Hook: An American Crossroad. Once the Red Hook Academy was founded in 1822, replacing the first school, the Adams name is listed as having sent students to it.

To see the esteem with which Adams was held by his community, one only needs to go to St. John’s Reformed Church in Upper Red Hook. There, Leonard notes,

 “The window on the front left side of the church is in memory of Ebenezer Adams. He frequently served as an elder of the church from 1813 until 1830. His home was a small house on the right hand side just north of The Ridge, as one left the village [of Upper Red Hook] heading south. Because of the reconfiguration of the roads, it is the last house on the right before one enters Route 9 at the southern end of the village. Ebenezer Adams died in 1846 at the age of 94. His wife, Elizabeth, died at 86, before the year was out.”