Governor Alva Adams (1850-1922) was born in Wisconsin in 1850. He arrived in Colorado in 1871 and built a home in Colorado Springs. In 1873 he moved to Pueblo where he was a hardware merchant. As a Democrat he served as Governor for four years and two months. (1887-89, 1897-99, and Jan-Mar 1905). Adams County (County Seat is Brighton) was named after him. At least three generations of the family served in a political office.The Governor's father was a member of the Wisconsin State Legislature and a Wisconsin State Senator. Governor Adams brother, William Herbert "Billy" Adams was Governor of Colorado from 1927-33 and is credited with starting Adams State College in Alamosa, CO.
The Governor's son, Alva B. Adams, was appointed to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate in 1923-24 and was later elected to the U.S. Senate (1933-41). Adams died in office of a myocardial infarction in 1941. The Alva B. Adams Tunnel, part of the Colorado Big Thompson Project, in Rocky Mountain National Park, is named after him.
This chair originally belonged to Colorado Governor Alva Adams (1850-1922). The governor's son, U.S. Senator Alva B. Adams, and his family continued living in the Governor's house at 103 W. Orman Avenue, in Pueblo, CO. Senator Adams and his wife Elizabeth L. Mattie had four children: two daughters and two sons.
Alva B. Adams Jr., the third child, married Theophilia Loretta Kissell (1917- 2002) in 1945. The couple were later divorced and he remarried in 1959. Loretta Kissell Adams contacted the State Historical Society that year, offering on behalf of the family to donate the dining room table, chairs, and the bedroom suite that had belonged to the Governor for an exhibit at the El Pueblo Museum in Pueblo.