1870-05-09-New York Herald-Palestine
PALESTINE
- New York Herald, 9 May 1870, p. 8
PALESTINE
The Jaffa American Colony—Its Origin, Organization, Settlement and Work.
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By the European mail at this port we have the following special correspondence from Palestine, dated at Jaffa on April 10, describing the results of an American scheme to colonize that portion of the Holy Land from the United States. …
The Last Days of the Jaffa American Colonists—Sketch of the Life of the Rev. G. J. Adams—Strange Infatuation—Stars as Large as Cart-wheels in Palestine—Rise, Decline and Fall of the Colony—…
- JAFFA, April 10, 1870.
Some persons have read with incredulity, others with a contemptuous smile, the articles occasionally appearing, during the years 1866 and 1868, about the American colony at Jaffa, or, as it has been styled by an English journal, "the extraordinary emigration which, reversing the ordinary flow of the tide from East to West, has come from "down East" in the State of Main to down east in Palestine."
To enter fully into the details of this lamentable enterprise would require a volume; but for a clear understanding of the present state of affairs, and the causes of its utter failure, it will be sufficient to give a brief sketch of the life and character of G. J. Adams, the leader or "president of the Church of the Messiah, and reviver of the faith once delivered to the saints," the rise of the colony and its objects.
G. J. Adams, alias Rev. G. J. Adams, alias Rev. G. J. W. Adams, alias Dr. G. J. W. Adams, was born in Liverpool of Jewish parentage. At an early age he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. When he was seventeen or eighteen years old he emigrated to America and obtained employment in a tailor's establishment at New York and afterwards in New Jersey. During this period he became noted as an exemplary, pious Methodist class leader, and is said to have shone with great brilliancy at love feasts and prayer meetings.
He often alluded in his discourses, addressed to the members of the Church of the Messiah, to these early experiences, and related spicy anecdotes, depicting the emotion occasionally exhibited at Methodist meetings.
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Unfortunately Adams had discovered a fondness for strong drink and the theatre, which soon acquired such power over him that he yielded to their influence and became a strolling player, to the great scandal of his friends. An interval elapses, and he is next heard of as a Mormon elder; later he reappears on the stage and becomes popularly known as the "Playing Preacher." This epithet he earned by his practice of announcing at the end of a play that he would preach a sermon, giving out the text, the following Sunday, at such a hall or chapel, naming the place. At the conclusion of his discourse he would call the attention of his audience to the fact that he would play Richard III. or William Tell or some other character at the theatre, and request their attendance. By this device he drew crowds of a certain class to hear him. At this period of his career or a little earlier he married Mrs. L. J. L. Adams, who often assisted him at the theatre. The circumstances attending their marriage are obscure. There were rumors afloat, a year or two ago, that Adams, after his marriage, had "to flee from a certain pistol," or, in other words, he had seduced Mrs. Adams, whose former husband is, it is alleged, still living, as well as Mr. Adams' former wife. Through Mr. and Mrs. Adams were legally married they were probably mutually deceived, the one declaring himself a widower, and the other, Mrs. Adams, stating she was a widow. Finding his avocation as an actor "about played out," and his habits unfitting him for any respectable situation, in 1861, as a last resort, he developed his scheme of the Church of the Messiah, and began going from village to village preaching on "Prophecy," and eventually reached Maine, where, under the guidance of "divine revelations," he preached "the doctrines once delivered to the saints," and unfolded his project for "the gathering to Palestine" and "dispensation of the fulness of times."
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