William Adams Richardson

Home > People > History > U.S. History: Biographies

Adams, William (1564–1620), English navigator, who was apprenticed to a shipwright aged 12, and learned shipbuilding and navigation. He then served for a short time in the English Navy under Sir Francis Drake before joining the Company of Barbary Merchants as a pilot and navigator, during which time he sailed on an exploration by sea in search of the North-East Passage. In 1598, attracted by the Dutch trade to India, he sailed with a small squadron of five ships from the Texel, bound for India via the Straits of Magellan. During the voyage he changed ship and this vessel, the Liefde, was the sole survivor of the expedition which finally reached Kyushu, in Japan, with a crew of sick and dying men. Adams's knowledge of ships and pilotage, as well as shipbuilding, made him a valuable man in the eyes of the shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu. He used him in various capacities and ordered Adams to build two western-style sailing ships, one of 80 tons, the other of 120 tons, which he did.

Adams became known in Japan as Miura Anjin (Miura Pilot) after the estate he was granted on the Miura Peninsula, for though he had a wife and children in England he was forbidden to return to them. Instead, the shogun arranged for him to marry the daughter of a samurai warrior—by whom he had two children—but before doing so he declared that Adams was dead and that the samurai Miura Anjin was born. This was convenient for everyone as it freed Adams to serve the shogun and to marry, as only a samurai could marry the daughter of a samurai.

In 1612 Adams heard news of an English trading station which had been set up at Bantam (now Banten) on north-west Java, and after managing to communicate with it, was visited a year later by an English ship from there, the Clove. She was commanded by Captain John Saris, and Adams assisted him in obtaining trading concessions from the shogun in favour of the British East India Company. He took a leading part in the company's organization in the Far East and, having now obtained permission to leave Japan, made many voyages to Siam and Cochin China on behalf of the company. However, he always returned to Japan, and died there.

His adventures have been the subject of several books including the novel Shogun (1976) by James Clavell.

Adam, William (1689–1748). As a Presbyterian Whig, Adam was acceptable both to the aristocracy and to the protagonists of the Scottish Enlightenment in post-1715 Scotland, and quickly established himself as the leading architect in that country. An entrepreneur with many interests, he invested in property in Edinburgh, and purchased a country estate at Blair Crambeth in Kinross, renamed Blair Adam. In 1728 Adam became Clerk and Storekeeper of the Works in Scotland, and from 1730 Mason to the Board of Ordnance in North Britain, which brought him many lucrative building-contracts for forts and other structures after 1745.

As an architect he took his architectural elements from a wide series of precedents, creating an eclectic mix that was lively and often startlingly original. While he imbibed much from Gibbs and Vanbrugh, it also appears he knew something of Continental Baroque architecture from a visit to The Netherlands. Adam endeavoured to publicize his own designs and those of other Scots architects in a book, but the volume languished until 1811 when it was published as Vitruvius Scoticus, consisting of plates without an explanatory text.

Adam was the founder of the famous Adam dynasty, including Robert and James. His most important buildings include Hopetoun House, West Lothian (1723–48), Haddo House, Aberdeenshire (1732–5), the erection of Inveraray Castle, Argyll, to designs by Roger Morris (1745–8), Mavisbank House, Loanhead, Midlothian (1723–7), and Floors Castle, Roxburghshire (1721–6).

Bibliography

W. Adam (1980);
Colvin (1995);
J. Fleming (1962);
Gifford (1989);
D. Howard (ed.) (1990)

William Adams Richardson 1821–96, American jurist and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, b. Tyngsboro, Mass. Admitted to the bar in 1846, he helped to codify the statute law of Massachusetts in 1855. Appointed Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (1869), he became Secretary in 1873. Following an investigation into contracts awarded for tax collections by which the Treasury was defrauded, Richardson was censured and forced to resign. President Grant, however, appointed (1874) him to the U.S. Court of Claims, of which he became chief justice in 1885.