Dorchester Illustration no. 2382 Ivers Adams
Portrait of Ivers Adams from http://arslongaartcards.com/cards/pioneer-portraits-i/ivers-adams/
Ivers Adams lived at the northeast corner of Washington Street and Columbia Road, where there is now a Burger King. Adams was the first president of the Boston Baseball Association in 1871. He founded the Boston Red Stockings and invited Harry and George Wright and two other plays of the disbanded Cincinnati Red Stockings to form the Boston Red Stockings.
Adams was born in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, May 20, 1838. In 1857 he moved to Boston to become an apprentice in the dry-goods firm of Houghton, Sawyer & Company. After his initial start there, he moved to a position at the John H. Pray & Sons Company, a carpet company.
After seeing the Cincinnati Red Stocks play on Boston Common in 1869, he felt that Boston needed a professional team as a way to raise Boston’s business profile. Adams with 4 others incorporated and raised $15,000 by selling shares in the new company. Adams saw the benefit of establishing baseball as a spectator sport, and he encouraged his businessmen friends to bring their friends to the games.
The Great Boston Fire destroyed the buildings of the John H. Pray Sons & Company in 1872, and Adams, who was now part of the ownership of the company, helped to rebuild, furnishing carpets to the new emerging class in the Boston area, which produced a high demand. It is said that Adams was well on his way to millionaire status by 1880. At age 44, he retired and moved his family to Dorchester. He died in 1914, two years after his team was named the Braves.
Home of Ivers Adams in Grove Hall was identified by Anthony Sammarco in Dorchester Then & Now