Ste. Genevieve, Missouri
Folk Artist – N.”Douglas’ Adams

Woods, metal strings, ebony, bone 
July, 1988
Length: 27 in; Width: 13 in
Strings – Lutes – Violin Family

The “Adolin” Viola designed and hand-made by Neil ‘Douglas’ Adams, Ste. Genevieve, MO., July, 1988 (initials “nDa”).  When played it is amazing how well you hear the vibrating sounds of the viola with your left ear.

Although Douglas Adams started with a simple eighth grade education, throughout his life, he had a very resourceful and inventive mind.   With that keen sense of inquiry came hobbles of all kinds and as a youth he was interested in photography and music.  In photography, he would take pictures of black and white and hand paint them – an original idea before color pictures were invented.   In music, he could play guitar, violin and mandolin and was in a group of 2 that were slated to sing on the radio, but WWII broke out and he joined the Navy.

Following World War II, the Adams family lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota.   Then in 1953, Douglas was transferred to work in St. Louis for Cargrill Carriers, a company at that time, that owned tow boats.  Douglas’s responsibility was to work on their diesel engines.  Then in 1968, the company transferred him to Baton Rouge, L.A. 

Later, he moved to Ste Genevieve to set up his own shop on the river for the riverboats as the chief engineer.  He could machine and custom make parts for the diesel engines on tow boats when there were no parts to be found.

Nevertheless, his passion for photography and music would never leave him and his ingenious mind would transfer from time to time to inventions that continued to serve these art forms.  He invented metal rings to attach to the newspaper cameramen’s equipment to help stabilize the camera.  And then invented a ring for a camera to see over a mile for bomb sites.  He designed a camera gun, before video cameras were invented, that would attach the camera to your shoulder (for which he did receive a US Patent).  Although his business of making this device failed, he was a man of integrity and honesty, and he repaid all the investors.  Douglas also created and built a one-man fisherman Swamp Boat, that could be used in the Everglades of Florida.  At one time, using his knowledge of engineering, he designed a new airplane and started making a flying saucer.  His daughter, whom I interviewed to obtain the history of this talented artist recalls her father (a tall man of 6’4″) as being extremely honest with a dry sense of humor.  She told of him making 3 other violins, and designed and made this one viola, which he named ‘Adolin’ and is the one that is now in the Hartenberger World Music Collection.   

Douglas [March 13, 1919 – March 28, 2004] died at the age of 85, in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri,  and was buried in Dittmer, Missouri