The Adams Brothers Store was started by Robert Watkins Adams in White Springs (FL) around 1865. According to David W. Hartman and David Coles' Biographical Roster of Florida's Confederate and Union Soldiers, Adams was an officer in the Confederate army who was wounded and taken captive at the Battle of Gettysburg. After a prisoner exchange and a period of hospitalization, he resigned from military service. Following the end of the Civil War, he farmed for a few years and then opened a general merchandise store in White Springs. According to Rowland H. Rerick's Memoirs of Florida, he successfully managed this business until his death on August 15, 1886.
After Adams died, his widow Sophia Jane Adams and their sons Francis and Nathaniel renovated the building. Renovation was completed in 1892. In 1905, the store became an incorporated family business. Farmers brought their cotton in wagons to be weighed on the cotton scale behind the store, and cash was paid or credit was then entered in the mercantile records to purchase goods. The Adams Brothers Store is one of Florida's oldest wooden-framed mercantile stores, and it is still in its original location.
From the guide to the Adams Brothers Store Ledger, 1898-1899, (Repository Unknown)
