James Adair was born in Antrim, Ireland in about 1709. Adair moved to Pennsylvania in 1730 and later South Carolina in 1735. There Adair conducted a trading business with nearby American Indian tribes. In about 1751 Adair moved into a portion of Johnston County, North Carolina that later became Dobbs County. In 1762 Priscilla Allen, also of Dobbs, claimed that enslaved people owned by Adair and Adair's son-in-law William McTyer had encouraged Allen's enslaved people to leave their home. If Adair was punished for the crime, he did not lose prominence. Adair later moved to Bladen County, North Carolina, where he died in about 1787.