Editor’s note: Over a period of 12 years beginning in 1983, local historian Ken Munford wrote 561 columns for the Gazette-Times. As part of the city’s 150th anniversary, the newspaper will publish a selection of these columns each Saturday. This one was originally printed March 11, 1984.

Adair Village, Benton County’s youngest incorporated city, has a heritage that in name at least extends far back into Oregon history. The Adair name was prominent even before Oregon became a state, nearly 150 years ago.

Adair Village was named for Camp Adair (1942-1946), which was named for Lt. Henry Rodney Adair, who was the son of Samuel D. Adair, who was the son of John Adair, the first U.S. customs collector on the Pacific Coast.

When Congress organized the Oregon Territory in 1848, President Polk selected the officers to administer it — Gen. Joseph Lane from Indiana as governor, Joseph Meek from Oregon as marshal, John Adair from Kentucky as customs collector, etc. Lane and Meek came west overland. John Adair, with his wife, Mary Ann, and six of their children, came by sea via the isthmus of Panama. From San Francisco to the Columbia River, they sailed on the Valadora, commanded by Capt. Nathaniel Crosby, Bing Crosby’s ancestor.

Astoria seemed to John Adair the logical place for the U.S. customs house, but Astorians would not donate land for it and wanted to charge what he considered an exorbitant price for the land. He staked out a donation land claim on the plateau above Astoria and built the customs house.

One son, John Adair Jr., graduated from West Point in 1861 but refused to serve in the Union army and fled to Canada. Later, when he returned to Oregon, he married Bethenia Angelina Owens and gave the Adair name to one of Oregon’s most famous women. Bethenia was the first woman with a medical degree to practice in the Oregon Country. She was an activist for women’s rights. In her medical, suffrage, temperance and legislative activities, she is remembered as Dr. Bethenia Owens-Adair.

Samuel D. Adair, another son of John Adair Sr., married a daughter of the Episcopal bishop of Oregon. Their son, Henry Rodney, born in Astoria in 1882, graduated from West Point in 1904. In 1916, he was serving as a first lieutenant with the 10th U.S. Cavalry when Pancho Villa’s border raids into New Mexico raised the ire of President Wilson. Wilson ordered Gen. J.J. “Blackjack” Pershing to take the 10th Cavalry and other units into Mexico to punish the raiders.

Lt. Adair was in charge of a small detachment near Carrizal, 90 miles south of El Paso, when his unit was overwhelmed by a large force of Villa’s raiders on June 21, 1916. The Morning Astorian described part of the action: “With undaunted courage Lt. Adair fought to the last, and when he fell mortally wounded his last thoughts were of duty. ‘Go on, sergeant,’ he said to the man sent for ammunition who would have paused in his errand to make easier the last minutes of his dying commander.”

A quarter of a century later, a few days after war was declared on Dec. 8, 1941, the U.S. Army announced it planned to build three cantonments on the Pacific Coast, each large enough to accommodate 33,000 men. One was to be near Corvallis. Purchase of land, removal of 250 farm families, relocation of four graveyards, realignment of the railroad and construction of buildings soon started. On March 17, 1942, the War Department announced that the cantonment midway between Corvallis, Albany and Monmouth would be named Camp Adair, in honor of Astoria-born Lt. Henry Rodney Adair.

Formal dedication of Camp Adair did not take place until more than a year later. On Sept. 7, 1943, a ceremony was held. The major in charge of construction called the site “one of the greatest in the United States.” W.M. Adair of Sherwood, brother of Lt. Adair, presented “the trusty saber, hard-shooting revolver, bullet-nicked hat and spurs” once carried by Lt. Adair. Other members of the family and 5,000 local people participated in the event and reiterated the lieutenant’s last command, “Go on, sergeant.”