Person · 1839 - 1864
Edward A. Adams
Edward Amos Adams was a Billerica sergeant who was mortally wounded near Petersburg, Virginia, in June 1864. His name is cut on the Soldiers' Monument on the Common, the white granite shaft crowned with the figure of a soldier that the town dedicated on October 8, 1873.
He was born in Billerica on November 25, 1839, according to the town's record of births (Hazen gives the year as 1837), the son of Amos Adams and Susan Dodge Adams. His father, a Charlestown yeoman, had bought the old Hill farm on the road from Billerica to Concord in 1831 and died without a will in 1840, leaving his widow and several young children. His mother bought back the farm at the administrator's auction in 1841 and about 1850 built the farmhouse that still stands at 294 Concord Road, the Adams-Stoker House; the 1850 census shows Edward, aged ten, living with her. His sisters were Susan Mary, born in 1830, and Esther, who married Aleck Stowell, a Boston jeweller. Edward was among the pupils who entered the Howe School in 1852, its first year.
According to Hazen he was the first man from Billerica to volunteer "for three years or the war" when the Rebellion began, and he was active in raising the town's quota of soldiers. In February 1864 he was mustered into Company E of the 59th Massachusetts Infantry, and he served as a sergeant. He died on June 27, 1864 of wounds received near Petersburg. His friends presented a portrait of him to the Howe School. His mother later married John C. Hamilton and died in 1878.