Adams, Wood & Weiller, LTD.
Livestock merchants at the Calgary Stockyards
by Shelly McElroy
Like many southern Albertans in the early 1900s, Harvey K. Adams immigrated to Alberta from Missouri, United States, where he was born in 1877. His father had been part of the livestock business and Adams followed in his footsteps, overseeing successful butcher and livestock businesses in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Montana.
In 1902, Harvey Adams moved to Edmonton. His livestock company was known as Morton & Adams, and he also had a mercantile business. In 1919, Adams arrived in Calgary and took charge of the branch office of the stockyards of Wood, Weiller & McCarthy. In 1921, he bought the firm for himself and rebranded it Adams, Wood & Weiller.
In 1924, a three-volume set called Alberta, Past and Present was published, highlighting the lives of hundreds of prominent Alberta citizens. (Only two women, Emily Murphy and an Irricana local, Dr. Margaret Wilson, the first woman to become a doctor in Alberta, were included). Adams was one of those profiled in the book. His accomplishments were highlighted, and his political views described thus, “Mr. Adams is an independent, giving his support to the man he thinks best fitted for the office, without regard to party principals.”
In 1958, thirty-four years later, an eighty-year-old Adams sat down with John Schmidt of the Calgary Herald to reflect on his life and on the changes he had witnessed in the livestock industry throughout his years in the business. Some of those shifts included the transition from cattle being shipped almost universally by rail to being transported by trucks and the longer work weeks for stockyard employees. The Herald noted, “The auction method and orderly marketing have made for a longer work week. In the old days, the commission men used to have all their business cleaned up by Thursday. Then there was nothing to do until Monday morning except take off to the country to look at cattle or spend the weekend in Banff.” Adams noted, “The work is so heavy now that when there is a heavy run, sales are organized for Saturday mornings.”
Adams was also an associate director of the Calgary Stampede for a time. He remarked, “I don’t think anyone ever visualized [the Calgary Stampede] growing to the extent it has today.” He was married to Maude Sonsley on New Years Day in 1898; they were together for over sixty years.
Adams, Wood & Weiller later became known as the Calgary Livestock Exchange. It was located kitty corner to where the Crossroads Farmers Market is situated today. It was later managed by Adams' son Art and his grandson Peter Adams. It closed in 1982.
After leaving Oklahoma for Montana, Audrey's father and mother moved to Edmonton and formed a partnership to establish one of Edmonton's first butcher shops known as Morton and Adams. With the coming of the Grand Trunk Railway and on the award of a contract from Pat Burns, the business was moved to Tofield in order to supply the construction crews with meat. In 1919 the family moved to Calgary where Harvey owned and managed the livestock commission firm of Adams, Wood and Weiller.
Sources:
Alberta, Past and Present Volume III
Cows, Cowboys, Cattlemen, & Characters: A History of the Calgary Stockyards, 1903-1989 by Leonard Friesen
Glenbow Library and Archives
Peel’s Prairie Provinces
https://searcharchives.ucalgary.ca/adams-wood-weiller-fonds
https://www.newspapers.com/image/481655644/?terms=Adams%2C%20wood%20and%20weiller&match=1
