Adams, J. Wesley Papers

Official, U.S State Department, 1941-1949; Foreign Service Officer, 1949-1973.

The papers of J. Wesley Adams contain letters relating to his work for the State Department that Adams wrote to his wife Frances, along with transcripts of the letters with notes prepared by his son Thomas, and a few related documents.

Size: 0.1 linear feet (about 200 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: The donors gave their copyright interest in writings in this collection to the U.S. government. Documents created by U.S. government officials in the course of their duties are also in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Randy Sowell (2024).

John Wesley Adams Jr. was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin on November 2, 1913. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern University in 1935 and a Master of Arts degree from the same institution in 1937. On July 8, 1939, Adams married Frances Elizabeth McStay. They had three children: Thomas, Daniel, and Katharine. Adams joined the U.S. Department of State in 1941. He served as an economic analyst in Quito, Ecuador in 1943-44; as a technical adviser with the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco in 1945; and as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Continental Peace and Security in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1947. In 1948-49, he was an adviser to the U.S. representative to the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan, which unsuccessfully sought to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Adams became a Foreign Service Officer in 1949, and subsequently served as an official at the U.S. Embassies in Egypt, India, the United Kingdom, Iraq, Jordan, and Pakistan. Adams retired from the Foreign Service in 1973. He died on December 29, 1989.

The papers of J. Wesley Adams contain letters relating to his work for the State Department that Adams wrote to his wife Frances, along with transcripts of the letters with notes prepared by his son Thomas, and a few related documents. Adams wrote the letters while he was in San Francisco in 1945, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1947, and in Washington, D.C. in 1949. The letters include information about his involvement in the United Nations Conference on International Organization (which created the UN Charter) and the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Continental Peace and Security (which drafted the Rio Treaty), as well as descriptions of his social activities and other experiences in San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro. In the letters he wrote from Washington to his wife and sons, who were visiting Europe, Adams discusses his work in connection with the UN Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) and efforts to resolve the conflict between the two nations over the disputed territory of Kashmir. He also details his personal and social experiences in the nation’s capital while his family was away.

The collection also includes a few related letters written by others, as well as transcripts and explanatory notes prepared by Thomas M. Adams. In the notes, Thomas provides information about references in his father’s letters and explains the personal and historical context in which they were written.

The Truman Library also has the transcript of an oral history interview with J. Wesley Adams.