Capt. John E. Adkins, Jr. Awarded Soldier\'s Medal
17 December 2009 - 8:54:29pm

Dateline: Tuesday, November 30, 1999 ‎(Questionnaire: A Look Back (Paula Allen)‎)

Fort Sam soldier saved lives in civilian shooting

Question: Here's an item that I might be of interest. I found it by accident while looking through a book on medals. Was ‎(the incident described in the enclosed photocopy)‎ reported in one of the papers? - Robin M. Ellis

Answer: The enclosure - From American Decorations, Supplement II, published in 1939 by the U.S. Government Printing Office - notes that Army Capt. John E. Adkins, Jr. was awarded the Soldier\'s Medal "for heroism displayed on the night of Jan. 31, 1937, at San Antonio." The medal was "awarded for acts of heroism . . . not involving actual conflict with an enemy."

In fact, Adkins tangled with someone else's enemy. The incident was personal, and the young officer from New Orleans was not the intended target. A headline from the San Antonio Express, Feb. 1, 1937, puts it succinctly: "Alamo Heights Youth Killed, Two Men, Girl Shot by Jealous Boy." According to statements from the surviving principals quoted in this and subsequent newspapers, Adkins was at first only a minor character in the drama. The "jealous boy" was David "Johnny" Walker, said to be "very popular among the younger set in Alamo Heights as well as other parts of the city."

Earlier that night, he had called his 18-year-old girlfriend, Maxine Thompson, to break a date "due to lack of funds." Thus freed, Thompson went on the town with friends, including Joseph Patrick Hennessey, Joe Pickett and Adkins. An attendant at a gas station on Broadway at Austin Highway allowed Walker to use the telephone and overheard him repeatedly making calls "to some girl's house, asking if she was there."

The young men accompanying Thompson may have had some inkling that Walker might try to retaliate. They conducted Thompson home in two cars. Both were parked outside Thompson's mother's house on East Ashby Place when the trouble started.

Pickett, who had known Walker since childhood, was in the back seat of the car Thompson was driving. Hennessey, a 24-year-old attorney, was sitting next to her in the front. This car was parked ahead of Pickett's car, in which Adkins was waiting for a ride home. Walker, brandishing two pistols, approached the first car on foot. Pickett spotted him first; for a few seconds, he assumed his old friend was playing a joke.

When Walker was a few feet from Thompson's car, he opened fire. He looked straight at his erstwhile girlfriend. She later said that there was no doubt in her mind that "I was the person he wanted to kill." She put up her hands to shield her face; one of the bullets caught her in the right hand, and another entered her forehead. When the wounded Thompson slumped in the driver's seat, another bullet hit Hennessey in the chest, killing him almost instantly. When Pickett rose from the back seat of the two-door coupe to stop the assailant, he, too, was wounded in the chest. Meanwhile, Adkins had gotten out of Pickett\'s car and ran up to Walker in an attempt to disarm him. A bullet struck him inn the thigh and stopped him, but he remained conscious while Walker made his getaway in a stolen car.

Adkins was taken to the Station Hospital at Fort Sam Houston where he served with the 12th Field Artillery. Adkins, along with the other survivors, was able to give a description of Walker and the car in which he escaped. He received the medal for his courageous action in confronting the armed assailant.

Walker was traced to New Orleans in a lengthy manhunt. All three survivors recovered from their wounds.

‎(Send questions about local history to Paula Allen, "Questionnaire: A Look Back," City Desk, San Antonio Express-News, P.O. Box 2171, San Antonio, Texas 78297-2171, or call the ExpressLine at 554-0500 and enter 7200. Please include a daytime phone number.)‎

Postscript: The Fort Sam Houston officer who won a medal for stopping a 1937 shooting spree ‎(Questionnaire, Nov. 30)‎ recovered to continue his Army career, says his son, John E. Adkins III. The younger Adkins remembers his father coming home from the hospital "and showing us the hole in his leg" - a wound incurred during the shootout on Ashby Place.

Recuperation delayed the young captains\'s departure for his next post in Hawaii, but Adkins made a full recovery and served as an artillery officer during World War II. A West Point graduate, Adkins earned further decorations and retired with the rank of Colonel. After leaving the service, he went to law school and practiced in his home town of New Orleans, retiring from his second career a few years before he died in 1985.

Canon & Civil Kinship
17 December 2009 - 8:45:31pm

A note on CANON & CIVIL KINSHIP

Canon and civil have to do with degrees of relationship between relatives—the terms stand for different methods to calculate the degrees. Canon law records the number of steps back to two relatives' common ancestor. For example, your first cousin is two steps to the ancestor you two share ‎(your grandparent)‎—so the canon number is 2.

Canon degree, also know as the Germanic system, is based on early German modes of determining kinship categories and organizing relationships. It is associated with a system of counting kinship distances by using the joints that extend from the top of the head to the tips of the fingers. The system is of both contemporary as well as historical importance, since it is enshrined in British common law and was used in Catholic canon statutes prior to the Vatican II reforms. The canon degree system assigns kinship on the sole basis of the larger of the number of links that either relative can count back to their most recent common ancestor.

Civil relationships give the total number of steps from one relative to the other. In the case of your first cousin, it\'s two steps from you to your grandparent and two more from your grandparent to your first cousin. That makes the civil relationship IV ‎(customarily shown in Roman numerals)‎.

The civil degree system was devised by the Romans and used as a formal basis for establishing customary and legal regulations on such matters as property inheritance or incest prohibitions. The Roman/civil system was continued in some European settings after the fall of the Empire and is still used in some contemporary Western legal and social systems. The Catholic Church changed its kinship degree calculation from the canon to the civil system as part of the Vatican II reforms. In the civil system, kinship degrees are simply calculated by adding the number of links from one of the relatives in question, to the common ancestor, and those that connect the ancestor to the other relative.

As an example, my father and my son's relationship are both I-1, and my sister's AND half sister's is II-1.

Adkins Coat of Arms
17 December 2009 - 8:43:52pm

The Adkins family can trace their ancestors back to the ancient territories of the English and Scottish Border Ridings between the 11th and 12th centuries.

The Shield is: Silver, a cross formed by a fleur de lys between four black stars.

The motto is: "Vincit cum legibus arma". ‎(He shall repress violence with laws)‎

ADKINS is a Patronymic name, derived from the early given name Adam ‎(Hebrew adama = red earth or man)‎, originating in England, France, Catalan, Italy, Germany, and Poland, as well as the Ashkenazic Jewish, Dutch and Flemish. Diminutive forms of Adam are Adkin, Atkin, Aitkin, Adnett, Adnitt , and Ade . Italian variants are Adami, Dami ; Polish and Jewish versions include Adamski . The Hugarian cognate is Adam , in Provencal it is Azam , in Spain, Adan.

The name ADKINS originated during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth centuries in England. Charles Bardsley states in his "English and Welsh Surnames" that "...the surname ADKINS was derived from a combination of the surname Adam and the diminutive kin." Following one tradition of the Anglo-Saxon people a well liked child would have the first syllable of his name combined with the diminutive kin to form a new name. In our case, the first syllable of Adam ‎(Ad)‎ was combined with the diminutive kin to form Adkin. Adkin would then be the child\'s pet or nickname and in many cases would become his legal name for life. In old English, the name was spelled ADEKYN, however, in later centuries the name according to Bardsley "...was sharpened to Adkin." Bardsley continues "All the other spellings were formed by misspelling." This method of name forming was also used to identify a son named after his father much as we use Jr. today. A child named after his father, Adam, would be called Adkin to indicate \'Little Adam\' or son of Adam.

The first known recorded use of the name occurred two times in 1273 when a man by the name of Adam LeFullere was listed on the Hundred Roll as Adekyn LeFullere. This Adam LeFullere was most likely a son of Adam and this entry signified that he was "Little" Adam LeFullere thus Adekyn LeFullere. The preceding has taken our name through its first transition from Adam to Adkin; following we will make the progression to Adkins. During the Thirteenth century in the London area a move had started to give all people two names. This movement was initiated because it had become nearly impossible ‎(where large numbers of people had gathered-London for example)‎ for record keepers such as tax collectors to differentiate people of the same given name. Although the use of two names was started for this reason, it led to the common tradition of family names, thus making it possible for people to trace their ancestry which was and still is impossible to do prior to the Thirteenth century.

This two-name policy gradually spread throughout the British Isles so that by the time our ancestors came to America-early 1600s-it was in full compliance. When this policy ‎(giving everyone two names)‎ was being implemented, the official charged with the responsibility would use one of five ways to gain the second name: Matrinimical - after the mother - produced such names as Janeson ‎(Jane\'s son)‎; Personal - Characteristic - giving us the names Short, Long, Redd, etc.; Location - provides names such as Hill, Lane, Rivers, etc.; Occupation - provides names such as Smith, Carpenter, Miller, etc; Patrinimical - after the father - provides names such as Stephenson, Johnson, etc. The last method led to the development of our name. A person named Adkin would have a son named Noah ‎(for example)‎ and the official would say "that is Noah, son of Adkin," and then list the son\'s name as Noah ADKINSON with the son indicating son of. After coming to America, most families dropped the "on" as ours did, and the name became Adkins with the "s" left as the indication that the name originally ended in "on".

The earliest proven records of our family from 1716 through the Revolutionary War had the name entered, most often, as Atkinson although Adkins, Adkinson, and Atkins were used. Our earliest known ancestor William V. Adkins is entered in Henrico, Goochland, Brunswick, and Lunenberg Counties of Virginia with all four of the above spellings. These different spellings of the name most often occurred as a result of record keeping misspellings. Since the Revolutionary War all known family members have spelled the name Adkins. The many spellings of the name ‎(Adkyn, Adkyns, Adkynson, Atkyn, Atkynson, Adkinson, Attekson, Addykin, Akin, Akins, as well as the above four)‎ came about during the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth centuries. Many people, because of their extremely primitive living conditions, did not learn to read and write thus when some government official ‎(census taker, court clerk, etc)‎ needed to record the name they did it phonetically or simply as they thought it should be.

‎(From Ronnie Adkins "ADKINS Land of York to Beech Fork")‎