James "Grizzly" Adams
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James/John Capen "Grizzly" Adams (October 20, 1807 – October 25, 1860) was a famed United States outdoorsman and later a performer in P. T. Barnum's shows.
Born in Medway, Massachusetts, Adams later spent many years in the mountain ranges of the U.S. west (mainly California), living around animals and sometimes capturing them for zoos. He went to the mountains after having gone broke through a series of disappointments, and having left his wife and children behind. Adams's famous companion was a bear named "Ben" (short for Benjamin Franklin), who died in a zoo that Adams himself opened in San Francisco in the late 1850s.
Adams died at about 53 years of age of meningitis from an open head wound that resulted of an accident while training a monkey on tour with P.T. Barnum in 1860. He was buried in Bay Path Cemetery, Charlton, Massachusetts. It is said that P. T. Barnum paid for his tombstone.
The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams, a 1973 book by Charles Sellier, a movie and a television series made in the U.S., were loosely based on his life in the wilderness. [1]
[edit] References
- The adventures of James Capen Adams, mountaineer and grizzly bear hunter, of California, San Francisco : Towne & Bacon, 1860.
