ADAM, JAMES (1822-1908) was born in Links Street, Aberdeen, and received the usual Scots schooling up to the age of 10. He was then apprenticed to a rope-spinner. At 17 he went to the south of England and worked for a year on railway construction. He then had some experience as a shipwright in Aberdeen. In his twenties he was precentor of the Free West Church. Adam tells in his book, Twenty-five Years of an Emigrant's Life in New Zealand (1876), how one evening when passing along Belmont Street he heard that Dr Burns and Dr Aldcorn were to speak in the Free Church on the Otago scheme. He went to the meeting and heard them, and afterwards had an interview with the speakers and made some suggestions. This produced a letter from the Edinburgh office of the Otago Association offering him a free passage to New Zealand on condition that he remained in Otago for a certain period. Adam sailed with his wife in the Philip Laing (20 Nov 1847). Two days after the selection of town lands in Dunedin Adam had granted to him at £4 per annum the lease of a section at the corner of High and Princes streets. There was a fine clump of mapau trees on it, and Adam lopped the branches of those that stood in suitable positions and left them standing as the corner posts of his house. The others were used in the building. Native builders inserted wands between the uprights 12 inches apart and laced long swamp grass into them. At the sale of town lands Adam's section was bought over his head. He worked at his trade as a shipwright and boatbuilder; built a ship or two, and planned a sawmill and flourmill for Valpy in the Leith valley. He also acquired at Anderson's Bay a small farm, at which he worked in his spare time. He was precentor and bellringer at First Church, the dual position yielding a salary of £10 per annum. Adam owned a small lighter, the Queen. He was pilot for the upper harbour and in 1856 piloted the ship Gil Blas, 175 tons, to an anchorage within 400 yards of the Dunedin jetty, thus solving the problem of navigating the upper harbour. In 1855 he recovered from the harbour near Port Chalmers the safe stolen in the robbery of the customhouse. Searching the bays from his lighter he detected it, half submerged, and rescued it with practically the whole of the £1,400 that it contained.

In 1853 Adam was elected to the first Otago Provincial Council, being second on the poll. During debates in the Provincial Council he complained of the slow settlement of the province, declaring that it would take 4,000 years at the existing rate to occupy the whole of their lands. The Council decided to open an office in Edinburgh, and Adam was sent to take charge of the work in Great Britain. James Barr remarks that he was well fitted by unwearied energy and ability to set forth in graphic and forcible terms the benefits which the working man might derive from emigration. A great qualification he possessed, too, in being able to speak from practical experience and personal observation, and in himself was a striking, though by no means uncommon or exaggerated, example of the inducements which the province held out to the intelligent, hardworking and persevering among the working classes. A vote of £25,000 was provided and Adam was absent until Jun 1857. Two months after his arrival in Scotland 220 emigrants were ready to sail. He returned by the Jura with 304 fellow-passengers, making a total of 2,017 souls who had sailed under his auspices in eight ships. There were fears during 1858 that the supply of labour would not easily be absorbed. At a public dinner at which he was entertained on his return Adam said he hoped to see Otago raised from the sixth to the third position amongst the provinces of New Zealand. Some time later, at the invitation of Taieri farmers, he visited Auckland, where there was surplus labour, to induce some of the men to move to Otago. About 100 accepted his invitation.

Adam had represented the Eastern Division of Dunedin in the Provincial Council in 1853. On his return to Otago he was invited to go into the Council again but, wishing to go on the land, he sold his Anderson's Bay property to W. H. Cutten (1859) and bought about seven square miles in south Tokomairiro, where before long he was running 4,000 sheep. Two thirds of the land was arable, but the discovery of gold put agriculture out of the question; his men went to the diggings and Adam spent long hours in the saddle looking after his flock. When gold was discovered on his own property at Adam's Flat 700 miners agreed to pay him a royalty of 2/6 a week each to dig there, but the payments were so irregular and the business so troublesome that he was glad to exchange the land with the government for twice the area elsewhere. His homestead was at Bon Accord, south Tokomairiro.

In various capacities Adam continued to do public service. In 1863 he was road claims commissioner. After contesting the Tokomairiro seat more than once he was again returned to the Provincial Council (1864-67). He was twice a member of the executive government (under Paterson in 1864-65, and Miller in 1865-66). In 1873 he was again appointed emigration agent for the provincial government and succeeded in directing to Otago a large portion of the emigration under the Vogel policy. In 1876 he published the book already mentioned.

Adam married, first Margaret Milne (Aberdeen), who died in 1856; and later Jessie Esson, who died in 1914. He died on 27 Mar 1908.

Otago P.C. Proc; Hocken; McIndoe; G. Brown; Otago Witness, 11 Oct 1858, 28 Mar 1898; Otago Daily Times, 26 Mar 1908; Scholefield in Otago Daily Times, 11 Apr 1930 (p).

Reference: Volume 1, page 18

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