Hannah Adams

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Hannah Adams (October 2, 1755–December 15, 1831) was a Christian author, born in Medfield, Massachusetts and died in Brookline. She was the first woman in the United States who made literature a profession.

She was the second of five children born to Thomas Adams and Elizabeth Clark. Her mother died when Hannah was 12 years old. Showing at an early age a fondness for study, she acquired a fair knowledge of Greek and Latin from divinity students boarding with her father, who was himself a man of literary tastes. He became bankrupt when she was in her seventeenth year, and she and her brothers and sisters were obliged to provide for themselves. During the Revolutionary War she supported herself by making lace, and afterward by teaching. She was a woman of varied learning and indomitable perseverance.

Her principal work was a View of Religious Opinions (1784), in which she gave a comprehensive survey of the various religions of the world. It was divided into:

  1. An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects Which Have Appeared from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Present Day (1784)
  2. A Summary History of New England (1799)
  3. The Truth and Excellence of the Christian Religion (1804)
  4. A Brief Account of Paganism, Mohammedanism, Judaism, and Deism
  5. An Account of the Different Religions of the World. The work passed through several editions, and was reprinted in England. It was a pioneering work, in that she represented denominations from the perspective of their adherents, without imposing her own preferences; she described herself as a Unitarian Christian. In the fourth edition she changed the title to Dictionary of Religions.
  6. Letters on the Gospels (1824; second edition 1826).

She also wrote Evidences of Christianity (1801). Her writings brought her little pecuniary profit, yet they secured her many friends, among them the Abbé Grégoire, with whom she carried on an extensive correspondence, and also received his aid in preparing her History of the Jews (1812). In 1814 she published a Controversy with Dr. Morse, referring to a legal dispute she had with him in 1801, and in 1826 Letters on the Gospels.

She was simple in her manners and of rare modesty. A voyage from Boston to Nahant, about ten miles, was her only journey by water, and a trip to Chelmsford her farthest by land. Nonetheless, she was a popular guest in New England society, and once stayed for two weeks at the house of her distant cousin, President John Adams. During the closing years of her life she enjoyed an annuity provided by friends in Boston, and at her death was buried in Mount Auburn, the first person whose body was placed in that cemetery. Her autobiography, edited with additions by Mrs. Hanah F. Lee, was published in Boston in 1832.

Her birthplace is preserved in Medfield. She is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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