Biography
Jewett William Adams was born in Vermont in 1835. He emigrated to California in the early 1850s and moved to Nevada in the 1860s. After serving as lieutenant governor of the state for eight years, he was elected governor in 1882. When his term ended in 1886, he served for several years as super-intendant of the mint at Carson City and then devoted the rest of his career to his livestock and other business. He was president and a director of the Nevada Lava Stone Company which was organized about 1895. In the late 1890s he formed a partnership with William N. McGill which became one of the largest livestock companies in the state. In 1908 he helped organize the Nevada Gypsum Company, a corporation formed to mine the gypsum deposits near Mound House which he had worked as the Empire Plaster Company. He was treasurer of the new company until 1912 when it was sold to the Pacific Portland Cement Company. In 1915 he moved to San Francisco and died there in 1920.
From the guide to the Jewett William Adams Papers, 1883-1912, (The Bancroft Library)
