By Bonnie Withers

October 2, 1755 is the birthday of Hannah Adams.  She was the first woman in America to earn her living (modestly) as a writer. A sickly child with no formal schooling, she was educated primarily through libraries, first her father’s and then others including the Harvard Library, the Boston Atheneum, and the library of her distant cousin, John Adams. Her interests focused on comparative religion and she soon became dissatisfied with the works of recent authors which all seemed to be prejudiced toward one religion or another. Adams, with the support of several prominent individuals, including James Freeman, Unitarian minister of King’s Chapel, Boston. wrote her own A Dictionary of Religion, which went through four editions from 1784 to 1817. (Each edition had a different title; this is the final one.) Miss Adams’ goal was to present each religion through its own perspective. Each edition reflected  evolving depth of research through reading and wide correspondence. She came to consider herself a Unitarian Christian and her book was used in Unitarian Sunday Schools for many years.   With her wide knowledge and lively personality, Hannah Adams was a welcome long-term guest in prominent Boston homes. She died in 1831.

Sources: This Day In Unitarian Universalist History (Schulman) and Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist History