Charles H. Adams (New York politician)


Charles Henry Adams was an American politician, a manufacturer, an attorney, and a U.S. Representative from New York.

Biography

Born in Coxsackie, New York, Adams attended the public schools, studied law, was admitted to the bar about 1845, and commenced practice in New York City. He married Elizabeth Platt and they had three children, Sarah, Mary, and William.

Career

Adams moved to Cohoes in 1850 and in 1851 was appointed with rank of colonel to Governor Washington Hunt's staff in 1851. He was a Know Nothing member of the New York State Assembly in 1858.
Having engaged in the manufacture of knit underwear and in banking, Adams retired from the active world of commerce in 1870 and served as first Mayor of Cohoes, New York from 1870 to 1872. He was a delegate to the 1872 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia and a member of the New York State Senate in 1872 and 1873. He was United States commissioner from New York to the Vienna Exposition in 1873.
Adams was elected as a Republican to the forty-fourth Congress, holding office as U. S. Representative for New York's sixteenth district from March 4, 1875, to March 3, 1877. He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1876 and resumed banking in Cohoes until 1892, when he retired and moved to New York City.
Adams died on December 15, 1902, in Manhattan, New York City; and was buried at the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.