Adams County, Wisconsin
| Adams County, Wisconsin | |
|---|---|
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 Location in the U.S. state of Wisconsin |
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 Wisconsin's location in the U.S. |
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| Founded | 1853 |
| Named for | John Adams or John Quincy Adams |
| Seat | Friendship |
| Largest city | Adams |
| Area | |
| • Total | 689 sq mi (1,785 km2) |
| • Land | 646 sq mi (1,673 km2) |
| • Water | 43 sq mi (111 km2), 6.2% |
| Population | |
| • (2010) | 20,875 |
| • Density | 32/sq mi (12/km²) |
| Congressional district | 3rd |
| Time zone | Central: UTC-6/-5 |
| Website | www |
Adams County is a county in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2010 census, the population was 20,875. Its county seat is Friendship. The county was created in 1848 and organized in 1853. Sources differ as to whether its name is in honor of the second President of the United States, John Adams, or his son, the sixth President, John Quincy Adams.
The founders of Adams County were from upstate New York. These people were "Yankee" settlers, that is to say they were descended from the English Puritans who settled New England in the 1600s. They were part of a wave of New England farmers who headed west into what was then the wilds of the Northwest Territory during the early 1800s. Most of them arrived as a result of the completion of the Erie Canal and the end of the Black Hawk War. They got to what is now Adams County by sailing up the Wisconsin River from the Mississippi River on small barges which they constructed themselves out of materials obtained from the surrounding woodlands. When they arrived in what is now Adams County there was nothing but dense virgin forest, the "Yankee" New Englanders laid out farms, constructed roads, erected government buildings and established post routes. They brought with them many of their Yankee New England values, such as a passion for education, establishing many schools as well as staunch support for abolitionism. They were mostly members of the Congregationalist Church though some were Episcopalian. Due to the second Great Awakening some of them had converted to Methodism and some became Baptist before moving to what is now Adams County. Adams County, like much of Wisconsin, would be culturally very continuous with early New England culture for most of its early history.
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