Adams, William Forbes

ADAMS, WILLIAM FORBES: Protestant Episcopal bishop of Easton (Md.); b. at Enniskillen (70 m. s.w. of Belfast), County Fermanagh, Ireland, Jan. 2, 1833. He came to America at the age of eight, was educated at the University of the South, and was admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1854, but subsequently studied theology, and was ordained deacon in 1859, and priest in the following year. He was rector of St. Paul’s Church, Woodville, Mass., from 1860 to 1866, when he was called to the rectorate of St. Peter’s, New Orléans, but went in the following year to St. Paul’s in the same city, where he remained until 1875. In that year he was consecrated first missionary bishop of New Mexico and Arizona, but was compelled by illness to resign. He then accepted the rectorate of Holy Trinity Church, Vicksburg, Miss., where he remained from 1876 to 1887, when he was consecrated bishop of Easton.