Sebastian C. Adams was a pioneer Oregon educator and minister. In 1850 he traveled overland to California and soon sailed to Portland (arrived 9/13/1850). He lived with his brother In Yamhill County and filed a donation land claim there in 1852. He taught school from 1852 to 1854 and in 1856 or '57 moved to the site of McMinnville and opened a school sponsored by the Disciples of Christ. In 1858 the school was acquired by the Baptists, who eventually developed it into Linfield College. Cabot served as Yamhill County Clerk, 1862-1868, and as state senator, 1868-1869. In 1869 he moved to Salem where for 13 years he was minister of the Disciples of Christ Christian Church. He was an ardent student of history, and in 1871 he first published his Illustrated Map of History. It was issued in color as both a scroll and a folio-sized volume. Adams traveled six years selilng them and published numerous articles on the origins of religion and related topics. With a liberalizing of his theological views he withdrew from preaching in the 1880s and organized a Unitarian church in Salem. Quote from the Oregon Daily Statesman, 1/6/1898: For 25 years he was an efficient and highly acceptable Christian minister... But in later years his liberal spirit has led him on into rationalism and entirely out of the Christian theological traces, but of course not away from its morals and refinement... SOURCE: SOHS essay in VF, based on Dictionary of Oregon History, by Howard McKinley Corning
