Ramon Frederick Adams

After graduating from Austin College, Adams accepted a position at the University of Arkansas' violin department where he worked for four years.[4] In 1916, Adams and his wife returned to Texas because he received the head position in the violin department at the Wichita Falls College of Music.[4] After only a year at Wichita Falls College, he opened his own violin school.[4] After teaching the violin for many years, he accepted positions to play for orchestras in Dallas, including the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He also played for theater orchestras.[1][4] Adams had a career-ending injury with a broken wrist in the 1920s that was caused by cranking a Model T Ford.[4]

After he pursued a brief violin career, Adams and his wife opened a candy store in Dallas in 1929. The store eventually developed into a chain because of the success it received. The Adams' owned the stores for twenty-six years but eventually retired from the candy business in 1955.[4]

Adams held a lifelong interest in western history that originated in his youth. Adams was particularly passionate about cattle, gunmen, and separating the myths of the West from what actually happened. This interest is what motivated him to write books on the subject throughout his life. He published his first book Poems of the Canadian West privately in 1919, and in 1923, had a short story included in Western Story Magazine.[1] However, Adams' first public publication was released in 1936 and was titled Cowboy Lingo; the book discussed the way that cowboys in the west utilized language.[1][4] He wrote a critique of western literature titled Burs Under the Saddle after conducting extensive research over the available historical texts, mostly regarding gunmen and outlaws, of the mid nineteenth century. Adams found that factual evidence was either misused or ignored in a significant amount of the texts he had read. This critique is considered to be an important staple in American West academia.[2] He wrote numerous books throughout his life, both on his own and co-authoring as well.[4]

Beyond authoring historical books, Adams was a renowned bibliographer whose work as an author drastically increased the amount of accurate literature available on life in the American west.[1] He wrote five bibliographies and his two most popular were The Rampaging Herd, which documents the history of the cattle industry in the west, and Six-Guns and Saddle Leather, which documents outlaws and gunmen.[1][4] He's credited with writing the first bibliography that contains writings about outlaws and gunmen in the West, Six-Guns and Saddle Leather.[2] In order to attain research material for his writing, Adams traveled throughout the United States and collected first hand accounts of life on the frontier. He was able to preserve the information regarding how language was used in the west and what habits were common for the west through these interviews.[1] By the time of his death, Adams had released 22 books and 2 were published and released after his death; in total, 24 works are attributed to his name.[4] Today his work continues to be referenced by historians and contemporaries alike.[5]

He was a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, the Western History Association, and the Southwest Writers.[2]