CLASS OF 1839

In the death of Rev. Ephraim Adams, D.D., at Waterloo, Iowa, Nov. 30, 1907, in his ninetieth year, one of the most honored and useful of the Dartmouth men of his generation has passed on. Doctor Adams was born in New Ipswich, N. H., Feb. 5, 1818. His college preparation was obtained at Appleton Academy, New Ipswich, and at Phillips Andover Academy. He was one of fifty who left the latter institution on being forbidden to form an anti-slavery society. After graduation from college he spent a year in Virginia, as principal of Petersburg Classical Institute. Then entering Andover Theological Seminary, he graduated in 1843. Eleven members of this class formed the famous lowa Band, who went together to that young territory to establish Christian institutions,—with what success the sterling moral and religious character of that great state may testify. Of this band but one is now left. With six other members of the band he was ordained at Denmark, lowa, Nov. 5, 1843. The statistical record of his life in lowa would read something like this: pastor at Mt. Pleasant, 1843-4, at Davenport, 1845-55: financial agent of lowa College, 1855-7; pastor at Decorah, 1857-72; superintendent of home missions for the state, 1872-82; agent of Iowa College, 1882-3: pastor at Eldora, 1883-9; in retirement at Waterloo, where he had lived during his superintendency of home missions, from 1889. The brief space which can be given to this notice can but faintly express the great service of Doctor Adams to his adopted state in connection with the churches of his denomination and with lowa College, of which he was many years a trustee and from which he received the degree of D.D. in 1882. One who knew him well has written of him: ''So there passes from our sight one of our very best men, 'an Israelite indeed,' a man almost without a blemish. He was a brother to us all. He showed us how to be ministers and how to be men. He was a forceful man in the councils of our church life. For years, the very personification of modesty though he was, he was the real leader of our Congregational hosts in lowa. lowa has never had a more useful citizen." Sept. 16, 1845, he married Elizabeth Douglass of Hanover, who was her husband's efficient helper in his varied and abundant labors until her death, July 12, 1905. They have two surviving sons. Prof. Henry O. Adams of I the University of Michigan, now an expert statistician in government service, and Prof. Ephraim B. Adams of Leland Stanford University.