Thomas H. Adams was born in Washington, D. C. in 1830, the son of James A. Adams, the father for many years a cashier of the Bank of Washington. Educated as a civil engineer, young Thomas held a position in the coast survey office until 1852, when he signed on with the Pacific Railroad Survey headed by the newly-elected Governor of the new Territory of Washington, Isaac I. Stevens. On the journey from St. Paul, Minnesota to the Northwest Coast in 1853, he served as surveyor, meteorologist, topographer and sketch artist. In the fall of 1853 he attached as an assistant to Captain John Mullan at Cantonment Stevens in the Bitterroot Valley, exploring south to Fort Hall, north to the Flathead and Kootenai Valleys, then back south to Lolo Pass, his job surveying and sketching the features of the land. After his work with the survey was completed, he settled in the Bitterroot Valley at Fort Owen and later, Hell Gate, near present day Missoula, Montana, and was appointed by Governor Stevens as Special Agent for the Flathead Indians. Trading with the local natives he learned enough of the Flathead language to compile a small dictionary, and his dealings with other tribal chiefs proved invaluable in gathering them for council and the signing of a government treaty in 1855. He maintained a large herd of government horses, raised cattle, prospected for gold, and traded with the settlers on the opened Emigrant Trail, the military road surveyed by Captain Mullan from Fort Benton to Walla Walla. In May of 1858 he is noted in the diary of Granville and James Stuart as a member of their party when gold was discovered at Gold Creek in the Deer Lodge Valley, this being recognized as the first placer camp in what would become the Montana Territory. He journeyed back to Washington, D. C. in 1859, but returned to the Bitterroot by early 1862 and "took a wife," the bride named Louise, a stepdaughter of Flathead Indian Lonepenny, by whom he had a son. The marriage soon ended however, and the mother took the child with her when she went back to live with her tribe. That spring of 1862 he boarded with the Stuart's at Gold Creek and washed the worked gravel in the sluices, looking for the elusive "pay streak." Much of his time in this early day Montana he was one of only a handful of non-natives and he often trekked from the mountain valleys to other trading places, such as Fort Benton on the Missouri, bringing back the needed supplies. In 1864 he ended his frontier life and returned to D. C. never to return to Montana. He purchased a farm on the Tenleytown road, married Eliza R. 'Barry' Brodhead on October 10, 1865, and they had a son, their only child, born in 1867. Eliza died in 1870 and he continued on at the Norwood property, until later, he moved into a city residence at 1028 16th Street Northwest. For a number of years he was secretary and treasurer of the Mt. Vernon Steamboat Company, but in the recent years before his death had not been in active business. In the early afternoon of April 3, 1900 he took ill while on a visit to the office of Judge Edward Lander, and he died later that evening at his home, survived by one sister, Alice, and his son Captain James Barry Adams of Gaithersburg, Maryland. He was a Mason and a member of St. John's Commandery, Blue Lodge. Thomas Adams kept up an association with the 'Society of Montana Pioneers,' and is mentioned in their published volume in 1899 (page 73) as having "arrived at Gold Creek in 1857. Occupation, miner and trader."