Edward Hamlyn Adams

Edward Hamlyn Adams was a British merchant, trader in enslaved people, and politician.

Early life

He was born on 30 April 1777 in Kingston, Jamaica the second but first surviving son of William Adams and his second wife Elizabeth Anne, daughter of Rev. Thomas Coxeter. After coming of age, Adams worked as a merchant in Kingston, establishing a partnership with Robert Robertson supplying enslaved labour to the colonial government including the provision of enslaved people to work in military camps.

Political career

In 1824, Adams, having moved to Wales, purchased Middleton Hall. He served as High Sheriff of Carmarthenshire in 1831. He was Member of Parliament for Carmarthenshire in 1833–4. Adams died on 30 May 1842.
His granddaughter Violet Paget. who wrote as novelist Vernon Lee, later described him as "extremely doctrinaire and moral, an ardent Voltairian, who spent much of his time disputing with the local parsons and refusing to pay tithes".

Personal life and family

Adams married in 1796 Amelia Sophia MacPherson, daughter of Captain John MacPherson of Philadelphia. They had two sons. Edward, the elder son, took as his surname a Welsh form, Ab-Adam or Abadam; he married Louisa Taylor. Adams also came to purchase an inn in Porthyrhyd, Carmarthenshire named the 'Lord Nelson', which is now named the 'Abadam Arms'. This inn was attacked in the Rebecca Riots.
There were three daughters of the marriage of Edward the elder and Amelia. They included Matilda Adams, who was the mother of Eugene Lee-Hamilton, by her first husband James Lee-Hamilton, and Vernon Lee, by her second husband Henry Ferguson Paget.
Edward Abadam quarrelled with his younger brother William. He had four daughters, the youngest being Alice Abadam, who became a leader in the suffragist and Catholic feminist movement. He left Middleton Hall to his eldest daughter, Lucy, who married the Rev. Richard Gwynne Lawrence. It then passed to her sister Adah, and to her son William John Hamlin Hughes, who sold the estate in 1919.