Biographical
Sketch
Sam Joe Adgent [1]
Sam Joe Adgent was born September 12, 1909, in Marshall County,
Tennessee. He was the eighth of Ira
Lee and Ella Wilson Adgent’s ten children.
His parents and grandparents were farmers in Maury and Marshall counties.
Their houses were typically small log or clapboard buildings with no
indoor plumbing. He walked to local
“one room” country schools, attending through the seventh grade when he had
to leave to help support the family. Like
other children in the community, he carried his lunch, usually a cold, baked
sweet potato and corn bread. As a
boy, he went with his family to hear preachers from any denomination who held
services nearby, usually in “brush arbors” because few church buildings
existed within walking distance. His
social life consisted of religious “singings,” school programs, dances, and
ice cream suppers. Until he reached
adulthood, a horse and wagon were the family’s primary means of
transportation, other than walking.
Before joining the Army in 1942, Sam Joe was a farmer and carpenter.
Some of his jobs involved World War II military installations: October
1941—February 1942 at the
Barrage
Balloon
Training
Center,
Camp
Tyson,
Paris,
TN; May – August 1942 on the “
Camp
Campbell
project,”
Clarksville,
TN; and September 1942 at
Memphis
Army
Hospital
until a material shortage halted construction.
Later in 1942, he completed basic training at
Camp
Forrest, receiving his first active duty assignment to Fort Oglethorpe,
Georgia
with the 4th S.C. Military Police Detachment.
He was based in the
U.S.
for the duration of his service at Telogia,
Florida;
Opelika,
Alabama;
Fort
McDowell, Angel Island, California;
Fort Lewis,
Washington; and
Fort
Ord, Ogden,
Utah, where he was honorably discharged 24 October 1945.
As an MP, his tasks included escorting unruly soldiers on leave in
Chattanooga
back to base at
Fort
Oglethorpe; escorting military prisoners to and from various locales; and conducting
Japanese-Americans from the Pacific Northwest to internment camps near Chicago.
After he returned to civilian life, he again worked as a carpenter in
Tennessee,
Indiana,
Kentucky,
Ohio,
Georgia, and at the Dale Hollow Dam in Celina,
TN.
From about mid-1946 to mid-1947, he
and his brother-in-law, Jim Harber, owned the Sinclair Service Station in
Chapel Hill. In October
1947 he rented a farm
near Caney Springs, and attended agriculture classes under the Veterans’
Administration GI Bill. He married
Sadie Laurene Harber on 15 April 1949. In
September of the following year, their only child, Nancy
was born. In the early 1950s, he
and neighbor, Lloyd Kincaid, co-owned the Sinclair Service Station Station in
Chapel Hill. In 1951, he purchased 118 acres in
the Wilson
School
/Lunn’s Store community of Marshall County, Tennessee, where he operated a
dairy and tobacco farm until the early 1970s.
He continued to work away from the farm as a carpenter through the 1960s.
For many years, he attended Smyrna
Baptist
Church. In his retirement years, he drove
a van for the Senior Citizens in Lewisburg,
Tennessee, and sold vacuum cleaners, until health concerns caused him to curtail his
driving in 1986. He died at home
from a heart attack and stroke 23 December, 1991 and is buried in
Smyrna
Church
Cemetery, Chapel Hill,
Tennessee
.
___________________________________
[1] Adgent was misspelled as Agent on his Social Security
card and military papers.