Gertie Thurman Adams was born in 1888 to Robert Lee (R.L) Adams and Velettie Adams, according to findagrave.com. Her sister was the Clarke School teacher, Henrietta Adams, and she was a cousin of Beulah and Florence Adams, her fellow Clarke School students. The R.L. and Velettie Adams residence was just to the west of Clarks Crossing and Piney Branch, near what is today the cul de sac for Carhill Road (see Figures 1, 2, & 3 ). Gertie’s father had been a farmer in 1880, a day laborer in 1900, and a railroad employee from 1910 on, according to census information. This progression in occupations is suggestive of the economic changes underway in the community in that era.
In 1906, Gertie was on the honor roll for the nearby Clarke School, having attained an average of 85 percent or higher, according to the Fairfax Herald. Gertie continued her schooling after Clarke, according to the 1940 US census, which indicates that she completed four years of high school. Gertie’s family apparently worshiped at the Beulah Methodist Protestant Church on Lawyers Road, judging from her participation in a recitation for Children’s Day at the church in 1907, according to the Fairfax Herald. (The church building remains to this day as a private residence; see Figure 11 in this history of Clarks Crossing Road). In 1912, Gertie married Oscar Adams, a cousin and a streetcar motorman in DC, according to marriage, census, and draft records as well as Oscar’s obituary. “A very quiet wedding took place on Wednesday last week, when Miss Gertie, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bud Adams, became the bride of Mr. Oscar Adams,” according to the Herald. The next year, the couple had a boy, according to the Washington Times, and in 1915 they had the second of their two children, a daughter (see Figure 4).
Unusually for the time in the case of a married woman with children who didn’t live on a farm, Gertie worked outside the home. Consequently, there’s more information about her available to us today than is typical for a Vienna-area woman of the early and mid-20th century. In the 1917 fiscal year, Gertie earned $149 from the Government Printing Office (GPO), according to the GPO’s annual report. In 1918, “Mrs. Gertie T. Adams, skilled laborer at 35 cents per hour, [was promoted by the GPO] to probational clerk at $840 per annum,” according to the Sunday Star. As of 1930, she was a clerk for the federal government and the family lived on 34th Street in Georgetown, according to the US census. By 1940 she was a senior clerk for the government, according to the census. Her advancement was presumably helpful for the family, because that same year, husband Oscar retired at age 50, according to his obituary, probably because of his health. As of 1942, Oscar was hospitalized at a Maryland sanitarium for patients with tuberculosis, according to his WWII draft registration. At the time, he was 6-feet, three-inches tall but weighed only 130 pounds, a height/weight mismatch presumably reflecting the ravages of TB. Oscar’s death in 1943 “after a long illness,” according to his obituary, left Gertie a widow. At the time of her husband’s death, Gertie was living with her daughter on Crittenden Street in Northeast DC, according to Oscar’s obituary.
After losing Oscar, Gertie continued to live in Washington and was working as a printing clerk in the Commerce Department as of 1950, according to the census. In 1954, she retired as a supply clerk from Commerce, where she had worked for 36 years, according to the Washington Post. Gertie lived into her nineties, like cousin Beulah. In 1982, Gertie Thurman Adams, 93, died of heart-related causes at a nursing facility in Richmond, judging from her death certificate. Her home of record at her death was her son’s house in Richmond, judging from family death certificates. Gertie is buried in Andrew Chapel Cemetery.