Local Farmer Predicted End of Days in 1844; Didn't Happen Then, Either

History is filled with countless predictions about the end of the world as we know it. 

The latest one says today — May 21, 2011 — is the day.

But the world hasn't ended, just as it didn't end Oct. 22, 1844, the day Avon Township resident Uriah Adams and his followers believed would be their final day on Earth before their ascension to heaven.

In the 1840s, Adams became enamored with the Millerites, an extremist religious group founded by New York farmer William Miller, who — through his study and interpretation of the Bible, particularly the book of Daniel — developed a chronology of the world from its birth to the eventual second coming of Christ.

Adams, once a civic leader in Avon Township, grew so fanatical over the beliefs of the Millerites that he became a pariah in town. By the 1860s, his followers grew disillusioned as he sat accused of adultery and incest.

Rise to cult leader

Adams was born in 1807 in East Bloomfield, NY. As noted in the article "A Millenarian Family: Uriah Adams and a Private Second Coming" written by former Rochester Hills Museum staff member Maureen Thalmann and published in the Michigan Historical Review in 2002, he was one of seven children in a farming family who moved to the Michigan Territory in 1826. His father, Mark, was considered smart but peculiar, as he would boast of “dreams and visions” and claim “to be able to rid his barn and land of rats simply by speaking to them.”

The younger Adams was likely influenced by his father but grew to be quite involved with local government. He served in a number of public offices, wrote Thalmann, including commissioner of schools, justice of the peace, inspector of schools and overseer of highways.

While in his 30s, Adams got swept up in the Millerite movement and its beliefs about the end of the world.

As L. Michael White notes in his online article “Prophetic Belief in the United States: William Miller and the Second Great Awakening” for the PBS series Frontline, various religious sects popped up across the eastern United States in the two decades following the Revolutionary War. This period in American history is known as the Second Great Awakening and saw “a number of new developments happening, especially on the religious front.”

According to a biography of Miller on Ohiohistorycentral.org, he “claimed to have discovered when Jesus Christ would return to Earth as stated in the Bible,” and by the 1830s, he began sharing his message and interpretation with the public. While not considered much of a preacher, Miller still managed, with help from assistant preachers, to attract an audience — so much so that by the early 1840s, “approximately 1 million people had attended camp meetings and heard (his) message.”

The Millerites determine the end of days

By his interpretation of the book of Daniel, Miller first determined that Christ would return in March 1843, when believers would experience the moment of Rapture and ascend into heaven. According to White, he used a “very elaborate and somewhat circuitous system” to come up with the year 1843.

For the most part, Millerites were “ordinary Americans,” White wrote. Several were already involved with other causes such as temperance, abolition and women’s rights.

“People were drawn to Miller out of a larger cultural climate of the moment,” White wrote.

Adams waits for redemption

Adams had already become deeply fanatical, and his views mirrored those of the Millerites.

One view in particular, Thalmann noted, was his belief that evil men and women would be “annihilated by God” rather than punished in hell, which “fit in with the Millerites’ theology, and (he) withdrew to his farm to await the final days.”

According to the Rochester Hills Museum, Adams’ farm was located near Walton and Livernois on land now occupied by . As he awaited the end of days, Adams' farm was neglected and the crops overgrown. It was typical of Millerites to rid themselves of earthly possessions and focus solely on the end of days.

A new day – and a great disappointment

March 1843 came and went with life continuing as usual. Disappointed, Miller recalculated his figures and released a new date for Christ’s second coming – October 1844. The specific date of Oct. 22 was eventually determined.

But when Oct. 22 passed without incident, a wave of great disappointment rushed over the stunned Millerites, causing several to abandon the cause. As Thalmann noted, “established churches mocked the Millerites as extremists and lunatics.” Still, the faithful dismissed the error and remained ready for the Second Coming whenever it would happen.

So devastated was Adams, wrote Thalmann, that illness consumed him, forcing him to remain in bed. In the wake of the ensuing scorn from residents and neighbors, his few followers thought it was “more and more difficult to live in the neighborhood outside the farm,” Thalmann wrote, so they moved in with Adams in 1845. His followers included his second wife, Mary, and their children; his siblings, Julius and Elizabeth; Julius’s wife and four children; and Jacob and Jane Gillett and their children.

Adams remained a recluse – ill and lying in bed most days, trying to understand why the world hadn't transformed as he believed.

In “Uri Adams: The History of a Strange and Eventful Career,” which appeared in a "Special Correspondence" to the Post and Tribune in Rochester in 1879 and later edited by Lillian Drake Avery in 1934 for the Collections of the Oakland County Pioneer and Historical Society, it was said that Adams claimed to have been visited by a beautiful infant whom he believed to be Christ. The child was said to have told Adams that he had been “looking for the second coming of Christ, but you did not look aright.”

When the child disappeared, Adams believed that “Christ’s spirit entered his own body,” noted Thalmann. He was sure he “had died, and the Lord was using his body to walk the Earth.”

Believing Adams was now Jesus Christ, his followers “worshipped him as the risen Lord,” wrote Thalmann.

Adams' delusions were evident to township residents, including Nancy Hugley who wrote to her brother, Francis, in St. Clair on April 28, 1846, stating “Uri Adams a Millerite came out and said that the resurrection had taken place and Jesus Christ had risen in him and they had great doings up there but I have not time to write the particulars but shall soon ..."

'A tyrannical madman'

Reactions from locals forced Adams and his followers deeper into isolation.

In History of Oakland County published in 1877, it was noted that Adams’s followers were also assumed to be possessed. Adams determined their possession, giving Jacob Gillett the “distinction of John the beloved disciple.” Jacob’s wife, Jane, became Mary, and Adams’ wife, Mary, became Martha (though some records say differently). The others were also thought to be inhabited by Jesus’ followers and were given new names.

Asserting even more power and territorial control over his followers, Adams abolished their marriages to form new ones. According to “The People vs. Uri Adams,” printed in the Pontiac Weekly Gazette on Feb. 4, 1865, and cited by Thalmann, Jane became Julius’ wife, and Elizabeth was betrothed to Jane’s husband, Jacob.

Adams “convinced his followers that as long as they remained on the farm, they would be sure of eternal life,” wrote Thalmann. “Leaving meant death.”

Adams’ father and another brother, Leonard, soon petitioned the Oakland County Probate Court to gain custody of Elizabeth, noted Thalmann, “on the grounds that she was insane.”

According to Probate Court records from June 1-11, 1846, and cited in Thalmann's article, Adams’ 12-year-old daughter told the court about the "unorthodox" living conditions on the farm. She and others testified that Adams was a “religious maniac.” Witnesses recounted his “rearrangement of the marital statuses of the others and his total neglect of his ‘business.’ ”

Leonard Adams was granted guardianship of Elizabeth, as brothers Uriah and Julius were considered insane.

Elizabeth eventually returned to the commune, where she died at age 27 in 1851. Adams used her death as an example of what would happen to the others if they doubted him and left the farm.

Jacob Gillett came to resent “working another man’s farm,” Thalmann wrote, and now believed Adams was a “tyrannical madman.” Unable to persuade his wife to leave the farm with him, Gillett set out “terrified, but determined to be free.”

In the account of his escape as edited by Avery, Gillett, after making it to a nearby road, was amazed that “I still breathed quite naturally and that my legs performed the good office of bearing me away from that accursed place.”

Attempts to retrieve his wife, once an unwilling follower, failed.

“She was still too fast bound in the chains of fanaticism to break them,” it was noted in History of Oakland County, “and refused to go back to their old home in another county.”

In 1854-55, however, Jane Gillett agreed to return home with Jacob. "But after she had been at home a few months," it was stated in History of Oakland County, "she went back to the Father (so called) again . . . "

While she was gone, “other people had joined, including a young woman named Eliza Warner,” wrote Thalmann. Jane Gillett eventually grew jealous of the new girl and “rebelled, claiming she wanted compensation for her years of toil.”

According to Avery's edited account cited by Thalmann, Adams didn’t pay for lack of money, so, Jane Gillett went public with stories of "promiscuous and illicit intercourse.”

Adams’ wife was also said to have made “a most horrible and disgusting confession,” according to History of Oakland County, “showing that her husband had been living in crime with five or six women.”

Citing Avery, Thalmann noted that Jane Gillett described instances of adultery and incest, claiming that Adams himself engaged in adulterous behavior. One of Adams' brothers, wrote Thalmann, went even further, accusing him of having sexual relations with his sister, Elizabeth.

This prompted the removal of the children from Adams’ home.

In History of Oakland County, it was stated that township residents initially viewed Adams and his followers as harmless – fanatical and crazy, but innocent.

The revelations by Adams’ wife and Jane Gillett put a whole new spin on the matter.

According to History of Oakland County, he became a disgrace to himself and the community as he was “bound over for trial before the Circuit Court on charges of adultery and incest.”

On March 3, 1865, Adams, now a widower, was found guilty of adultery and was sentenced to one year of hard labor at Jackson State Prison.

In History of Oakland County, it was stated that the incest charge was "held in suspense over him," while Adams carried out his sentence. According to the sworn testimony of Dr. J. E. Wilson in Oakland County Circuit Court on Dec. 18, 1867, and cited by Thalmann, Adams ill health prevented him from appearing in court. "The case appears to have been dropped," wrote Thalmann.

Adams lived out the remainder of his days on his farm with his third wife, Eliza. He died Jan. 2, 1879, at age 71 and still “unrepentant,” noted Thalmann. An obituary printed Jan. 9, 1879, in the Rochester Era and quoted in Thalmann's article attempted to cushion Adams' ill-fated legacy by urging residents to "let the mantle of Christian charity fall softly between him and all other memories."

Adams is buried in Mount Avon Cemetery with his first wife, Mary Farrington, and 6-month-old daughter, Abolitia. Mary died in 1837 at age 32, just six days before their baby daughter died.

Could it be that the sudden deaths of his wife and daughter spurred Adams' belief, hope and eventual delusion that the end of days were imminent, allowing him to reunite with his family and sparing him unbearable heartache?

Perhaps.