“Boston” Adams House Tour Stop 19 (Battle of Westport Driving Tour) (Price's Raid)

Marker Inscription: Confederate Gen. Price made his headquarters here the night of Oct. 22, 1864. His generals convinced him to start south but he refused to abandon his 500-wagon train of war booty. Gen. Shelby's Division camped near Forest Hill cemetery. Gen. Marmaduke was at Byram's Ford and Fagan's Div. and the train were on the west side of the Blue River one mile south of the ford. Benteen's Union Brigade fed their horses west of here at noon on Oct. 23rd.

The marker notes the “Boston” Adams House which was used by Confederate Maj. Gen. Sterling Price as a headquarters and later by the Confederates as a field hospital. This was part of the larger three-day Battle of Westport.

The Battle of Westport took place from October 21-23, 1864. It was the largest battle of the Civil War west of the Mississippi River and the turning point in Confederate Maj. Gen. Sterling Price’s Raid of Missouri. The Battle of Westport transformed Price’s Raid from a mediocre military success, to an abject failure, ending with Union forces driving Price’s Army out of Missouri all the way back to Arkansas. His army disintegrated along the way, leaving him hardly anything to show for his trouble. The Union maintained control of Missouri for the remainder of the Civil War. 

The house of Thomas “Boston” Maxwell Adams was used by Maj. Gen. Price as his headquarters and as camp for part of his Army of the Missouri on October 22. It was here that Price came up with his battle plan for the 23. He decided to deploy his forces on two fronts. Brig. Gen. Joseph O. Shelby’s Division and Maj. Gen. James Fagan’s Division would fight Union Maj Gen. Samuel R. Curtis and James G. Blunt and the Army of the Border along Brush Creek, and Brig. Gen. John s. Marmaduke’s Division would protect his rear along the Big Blue River by Byram’s Ford and hold off Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton and his Provisional Cavalry Division of the Department of the Missouri. Price also decided to have Brig. Gen.William Cabell’s Brigade protect the wagon train of 500 wagons and about 5,000 head of cattle. He commanded they travel south by Hickman Mills Road, and then to turn southwest to Little Santa Fe. He hoped this would avoid having Pleasonton from swinging south to cut off the escape of the wagon train and end in its capture. The “Boston” Adams House was taken possession of, by the Confederates for use as a field hospital.

The man himself Thomas “Boston” Maxwell Adams was himself a rather interesting individual. According to Nellie McCoy Harris he: “When quite a young man he accompanied, as correspondent of a Boston newspaper a party of filibusters to Cuba, hence his nickname… After Mr. Adams returned to the United States he became involved in what is known in history as "Dorr's Rebellion", Dorr appointing him his private secretary .Boston Adams, an ardent Southern sympathizer, was arrested and imprisoned in St. Louis in the sorrowful period described by Winston Churchill, [the American author known for The Crisis, which is about the Civil War, not the British Prime Minister] and either died in prison or soon after his release, the rest of his confinement when a federal prisoner.” (Harris, 1912)

The location of the house remains up to some scholarly debate. The historical marker is supposedly in the wrong place. Local historian and previous chairman of the Monnett Battle of Westport Fund Dan Smith thinks the location is: “was located on the 40 acres of the NE ¼ of the NW ¼ of section 10, Township 48, Range 33; this translates into the ground of the present residential area on the southwest corner of the intersection of Indiana and 67th Street. This tract of land was the first purchase of land in Jackson County by Adams; it was purchased from the general land office in June 1850.” (Dan Smith, email message to author, October 29, 2024) Here is also a quote from Nellie McCoy Harris, daughter of John Calvin McCoy the “Father of Kansas City”, describing the location of the house: “There were three highways leading to this fine plantation; one from Kansas City “ ‘angling’ through the dense woods from Judge Smart’s at Ottawa, (now Twelfth) & Main streets, crossing O.K. Creek about Harrison and Eighteenth, thence southeast to the old Westport and Independence road, south to Collins ford on Brush Creek, up the long incline southward about a mile and there you were. The other two roads went from Westport, one south on the Wornall road to Ben Simpson’s corner [55th and Wornall], then east; the third road and the one most used turned south either at what is now Westport Avenue and Main or north of Mill Creek crossing, passing to the west of W. R. Nelson’s stone wall enclosed park, crossing Brush Creek at Duke’s ford, up the hill, then through the Hays neighborhood to Major Adams house just at the west entrance to Swope Park.” (Harris 1912) Author Kyle Sinisi in his book The Last Hurrah: Sterling Price’s Missouri Expedition Of 1864  described the “Boston Adams’s house near the intersection of the Harrisonville [which is now Prospect] and Byram’s ford roads [this road no longer exists].” (Sinisi 2015, 219) The Style of the house was also described by Dan Smith as: “The House was of a “dog trot” Southern vernacular style. The center breezeway was later enclosed by 1864 and measured 12’X 12’; the breezeway was flanked by two larger square structures most likely made of stone due to the fact that corrals at the site were made of stone. The Boston Adams House was constructed between 1850 and 1860.”(Dan Smith, email message to author, October 29, 2024)  

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Harris, Nellie McCoy. “Boston Adams, a Gentleman of the Old School.” Boston Adams, a Gentleman of the Old School | KC History - Missouri Valley Special Collections, June 1, 1971. https://kcpl.i8.dgicloud.com/binary/boston-adams-gentleman-old-school. 

The Historical Marker Database. Accessed December 7, 2024. https://www.hmdb.org/. 

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Scott, Robert N., H. M. Lazelle, George B. Davis, Leslie J. Perry, Joseph W. Kirkley, Fred C. Ainsworth, John S. Moodey, and Calvin D. Cowles. The War of the Rebellion: A compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1880.

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“The Rebel Invasion Price Routed and Retreating.” The St. Joseph Herald. October 25, 1864.