Hannah Adams

Hannah Adams (1755-1831) was a Unitarian and the first professional woman of letters in the United States and a member of the Boston Athenaeum. She was born in Medfield, Massachusetts, and died in Brookline, Massachusetts.  She was a distant cousin of John Adams, 2nd President of the United States and the individual to whom she dedicated her 1791 edition of her most famous work, An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects which have Appeared in the World from the Beginning of the Christian Aera to the Present Day. With an Appendix Containing a Brief Account of the Different Schemes of Religion now Embraced Among Mankind, etc. (Boston, 1784, 1791, 1800, and 1801). This work first appeared in England in 1805, printed by the Baptist minister J. W. Morris at Dunstable for another Baptist minister, William Button in Paternoster Row, London, and his son. The volume was primarily printed for the Independent preacher and bookseller, Thomas Williams (another edition appeared in 1814). The 1805 edition also contained a preface by Andrew Fuller entitled “An Essay on Truth” ( 5-30).  See A Memoir of Miss Hannah Adams (Boston, 1832); also Gary D. Schimdt, A Passionate Usefulness: The Life and Literary Labors of Hannah Adams (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2004).