Adams, Olive (née Occom)

first name (variants): Olive Occom
last name (variants): Adams
Birth: 1755 in Montauk, NY
Death: 1837
Nationality

Mohegan

Marital status

Married Solomon Adams, a Farmington Indian, on April 14, 1775. They had three children; one of the daughters was called Philenia.

Biography

Olive was the fourth child and third daughter born to Mary Fowler Occom and Samsom Occom during their residence in Montauk on Long Island, where Occom served as minister and schoolteacher to the Montaukett Indians. She would have moved with the family back to Mohegan in Connecticut in 1763, but little else is known about her life. From a letter Occom wrote to Joseph Johnson on April 14, 1775 (manuscript 775264), we know that Olive married Solomon Adams, a Farmington Indian. Love reports that they had three children, that Solomon died around 1783, and that Olive lived on her husband's land in Farmington. However, Occom records in his journal for 1786 visiting Olive on his preaching and fundraising tours of New England to raise money for the Brothertown project, and she is living between Old Windsor and Bolton, CT, a location northwest of Farmington and on the other side of Hartford. The following year, Occom twice mentions in his journal "Olive's affair," that he "searched into" it "and Say Writings about it to my Satisfaction," and then "left" it with a Mr. Wadsworth (manuscript 787660.1). Love notes that Olive emigrated to Brotherton, and that her children sold the family plot at Farmington in 1801. J. Brooks speculates that the "affair" Occom negotiated for his daughter probably concerned the disposition of Olive's husband's Farmington lot.

Sources

Blodgett, Harold. Samson Occom. Hanover: Dartmouth College Publications, 1935; Brooks, Joanna, ed. The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006; Love, W. DeLoss, Jr. Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England. 1899. Rpt. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003. http://www.geni.com/people/Olive-Adams/6000000013489240592.