Williams Adam was last seen near the train trestle on West Housatonic street late on a Sunday night.

A plaque at First Church in honor of Adam and his wife.

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A president of Berkshire County Savings Bank disappeared 82 years ago. His fate is unknown to this day.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The banker was a man known to be in his office every business day with "unfailing regularity," so his absence that Monday morning came as a surprise.  

William L. Adam had been with Berkshire County Savings Bank for just under 50 years by 1933, succeeding his father as treasurer and then president, though at age 78 he was showing some signs of a slowing pace. He'd had some issues with his health as of late, and so when he did not appear for work that morning, an associate went to call on him at his home.

He was not to be found at his house at 16 West Housatonic St.; looking for him, his housekeeper found that his bed covers had been thrown part way back, but did not otherwise appear to have been slept in.  When he still had not returned Monday night, he was reported missing, and a search was organized.

The bank issued a statement on Tuesday that they believed he may have taken a few days off to visit friends or relatives, but it was soon learned that he had left his watch, wallet and keys at home, and withdrawn no money from his account recently. A neighbor reported that he had seen him shortly after 11 p.m. on Sunday, passing him walking under the train bridge farther down West Housatonic Street.

Friends and colleagues were now at a loss to explain his sudden disappearance. A native of the city, Adam had over the duration of his career established himself as one of its pillars. Graduating Williams College in 1877, he'd gone on to Columbia for law school and become a member of the Berkshire bar in 1882. He was a member of the prestigious Monday Evening Club, served on numerous boards, and had served for a quarter century on the city's school committee, a number of them as its chairman. He had for many years been married to Caroline Redfern Adam, founder of the city's kindergarten system and the sister of William C. Redfield, a former congressman who'd served in the cabinet of President Wilson following his own unsuccessful run for the presidency in 1912. Caroline had passed away a little over two years earlier.

At first police began operating on the theory that he may have wandered off into the nearby woods and become lost; for days, a posse of some 250 volunteers combed them

When these searches failed to uncover any sign of him, they speculated that he may have ended up in the west branch of the Housatonic River, which at the time had been experiencing flooding amidst the spring's thaw. A 10-year-old Whipple Street boy had drowned in the east branch of the river the same week, and his body was not located until a few days later. Several miles of the river were dragged, but no sign of Adam's body was uncovered.

The Pittsfield police were offering a reward of $200 for information about his whereabouts, and in early May some Connecticut cousins added an additional $1,000 reward. The search for the missing bank president was extended to New York City and locations throughout New England and beyond. Congressman Allen Treadway had even journeyed to Washington, D.C., to investigate reports of a man fitting Adam's description who had been found with amnesia.

"We have done everything we can to find him, but he seems to have completely vanished from the face of the Earth," said his brother-in-law Redfield, after six weeks of searching had failed to yield any clues.

In June, the local probate court granted authority to the executor of his will, Charles Hibbard, to use funds from his estate to keep up his house and bills in the hopes that Adam might yet turn up.

Meanwhile, Berkshire County Savings Bank had been scrambling to reorganize its leadership, as one month after the disappearance of its president, it also weathered the unexpected death of its treasurer, Fred Francis. William Whittlesey and Gardner Morse were quickly elevated to fill the top two slots in the bank, though Adam was not dropped from its list of directors until January 1934.

It was not until early 1938 that a judge allowed his will to be disposed of, concluding ultimately that Adam had most probably died on the night of his disappearance.  

The prevailing conclusion was that he had likely jumped into the river at Mill Street, near where he was last seen. Despite the absence of any definitive evidence, certain aspects about the case can be seen as supporting a verdict of suicide.  

On the evening he was last seen, according to his maid, he had quietly made his own dinner before retiring to the library to read. After she went to bed, he apparently changed from the good suit he had been wearing that Sunday into an older suit, and left behind all of the customary items he usually would have taken when leaving the house.  

It was later learned that the widower Adam had his responsibilities significantly reduced by the bank, who said they worried that the strain was too much for him. He had also relinquished several of his volunteer and club memberships.

Finally, upon the release of his will, it turned out that his actual holdings, which had been believed to be around $350,00, were just over $50,000. Though far from broke by the standards of the average person, it represented a vast shrinkage in his savings and investments from his previous financial state. For men in Adam's position, extreme actions in the face of such losses were not uncommon during this Great Depression period, during which the suicide rate in the United States saw its largest spike in history.

In 1940, remains found in the Housatonic River at Sheffield lead to speculation that the mystery might finally be solved. The decomposed body wore black oxford shoes similar to those worn by William Adam, and had approximately the same number of gold teeth. The skull was sent to a dentist in New York for identification, but a subsequent newspaper report indicated that the identity of the body was never determined.

More recently, some bones of human origin turned up along the Housatonic shoreline in Great Barrington in 2010. Some hypothesized that they may have originated from a "lost" cemetery in the vicinity of the find, on what was then still part of the Crissey Farm, but the possibility also exists that they could be those of Adam.

Media reports at the time indicate that the bones were delivered to Boston so that they could be examined by a forensic anthropologist. No followup reports were ever published, and despite repeated inquiries over several months to the chief medical examiner's office, no further information about this find has been provided. It is unclear whether the bones found in 2010 were ever examined.

In 1934, a plaque was installed in the west wall of First Church of Christ Congregational in Pittsfield commemorating William Adam and his wife, Caroline Redfield. Later an elm tree was donated to Park Square in his memory by Napoleon Campbell, proprietor of the Wendell Hotel.

"No local story could be more sensational than one resolving the mystery," wrote Richard Happel in the Berkshire Eagle, 16 years after Mr. Adam's disappearance. "There's no sign of that happening."

Sagas of the Shire is born out of an attempt to break new ground, or at least break out of a certain habitual mold of local history storytelling. While the Berkshires have enjoyed many great historians and much outstanding historical writing, it is my belief that there is a great deal that may have fallen by the wayside in its attempt to hammer out a unified narrative in its vision (and marketing) of itself. 

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