The plaque is on the back of one of the choristers stalls in the chancel.
North side, front row, tenth from the west end.
ADAMS C.B. DIED
SEP 19 1869 AGE 60.
DD: OFFICERS 28 REGT.
Further Information (From the 1873 Guide to the Church)
Major-General Adams commanded the 28th Regiment throughout the Eastern Campaign of 1854-55, including the battles of Alma and Inkerman, seige and fall of Sebastopol and action of 18th June in the cemetery. Succeeded to the command of the Brigade on Sir William Eyre being wounded, and brought it out of action. Medal and three clasps, C.B., Officer of the Legion of Honour, Sardinian War medal and 3rd Clas of the Medjidhe.
For an account of the Battle of Inkerman see Wikipedia
Biography
[Copied from http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com]
Frank Adams was the second son of Henry Cadwallader Adams and Emma Curtis (a daughter of Sir William Curtis) of Ansty, a village in the Folshil district of Warwickshire, England located about 7 kilometres NE of Coventry. They had five boys and four girls. As Captain Frank Adams he arrived in Sydney on 23 August 1836 on HMS Rattlesnake with his regiment the 28th Regiment of Foot after having first made landfall in Australia at Hobart Town on 30 May to offload convicts. In November that year he was stationed at Bathurst and in December at Emu Plains. From January 1837 he was at the Brigade Office in Sydney and, for the three months from 1 June to 31 Aug. 1837 during which Maria's first child Frank Jr. would have been conceived, he was Aide-de-Camp to the Governor of the colony Sir Richard Bourke. In that capacity he would have spent much of his time at Government House at Parramatta a little over a kilometer from where the Gordon family resided.
After rejoining his 28th regiment Frank Adams was stationed at Parramatta where he and Maria became embroiled in a scandal that erupted publicly after Frank was challenged to fight a duel. Duels were a breach of the peace and illegal in the colony. Frank Adams rebuffed the challenger (Mr. Catterell) who then affixed to a fence outside the main gates to Government House a placard highly defamatory of him and an extraordinary legal senario ensued. Instead of the normal course of a reputation injured person seeking a remedy by way of instigating a civil action for defamation seeking damages, upon the complaint by Frank Adams to the Supreme Court that an attempt had been made to incite him to fight an illegal duel, the then Attorney General of the Colony, who acted as Frank's personal legal representative when the matter came before the Court, by virtue of it finding a prima facie case established that Frank Adams had been challenged to fight an illegal duel was then obliged to act in his official capacity as senior crown law officer of the colony to instigate a criminal prosecution against the duel challenger Mr. Catterell for having incited a person (who in the Attorney General's private capacity was his client) to commit a breach of the peace! Given the prominance of the persons named as being in some way involved in the matter, such as the Governor of the colony Sir Richard Bourke and the Deputy Governor and Commander of the 28th Regt. Lieut. Colonel Cudbert French, and the salacious nature of the allegations contained in the affidavits, not surprisingly the case was well reported by all Sydney newspapers. Possessed of such elements it no doubt would have been the subject of widespread gossip and interest as to the identity and unmarried status of Maria Gordon, she being the daughter of Ann Gordon who until twelve months previous had been the Matron of the Parramatta Female Factory from where the masters and mistresses of the colony obtained their convict female domestic servants.
From Jan 1838 to the end of May 1839 Frank Adams was stationed at Maitland and, after a month in Sydney, for the next eight months from July 1839 to Feb 1840 at Illawarra. It is said he obtained a grant of land at West Maitland at Horseshoe Bend upon which he built a hotel in 1840 named the 'White Horse Hotel'.
Frank Adams left for England on 24 March 1840 on the Trusty on leave from the regiment. After two years absence from the colony he arrived back in Sydney on 7 March 1842 on the barque Maitla having left the Downs on 26 Oct 1841. The reunion with Maria, and then 4 year old son Frank Jr., must have occurred very soon after the ship was released from quarantine as the next child Arthur was born just nine months and 4 days later. However Capt. Frank Adams was not around for that happy event as after only three months back in Australia he departed with his regiment for India destined never to return. He left Sydney on the 19 June on the Kelso in company with two other regimental transport ships the John Brewer and the Arab. It was probably fortunate for Maria they did not marry as she and Frank Jr. would have accompanied him to India and likely perished there soon after arrival. After the arrival of the regiment in Bombay the losses from disease of officers, other ranks, and their women and children, were massive and included the commanding officer Lt. Colonel French.
After two years in India Frank Adams married on 16 Sep 1844 at Poona (now Pune 75 miles SE of Bombay) a widow Ellen Straith and they had a family of five children. After the tour of duty in India the 28th regiment returned to England in 1848. From 1857 to 1865 his regiment was again in India and in 1866 relocated to Ireland. He was in command of the regiment in the Crimean War where it took part in the eleven month siege of the town of Sebastopol. The 28th was present when the allied bombardment of Sebastopol commenced on 17 Oct 1854 and it participated in the 8000 strong British force which repulsed the 60,000 strong Russian attack on the 5th Nov 1854 resulting in the Russians retreating later that same day leaving behind 15,000 dead and wounded. Following the declaration of peace in March 1856 the 28th regiment left for Malta on 24th May. By 1857 Colonel Adams had been honoured by the monarch with a CB (Companion of the Order of the Bath) and by the French government with the Legion of Honour. He achieved the rank of Major-General but it is not known when he left the 28th to take up the higher command. He died aged 60 on 19 Sept 1869 whilst on a voyage home to England.
