Hannah Adams (1755-1831) was a Unitarian and one of the first professional woman of letters in the United States, even becoming a member of the Boston Athenaeum. She lived her entire life in 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 impressive 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). The book appeared in England in 1805, printed by the Particular Baptist minister J. W. Morris of Dunstable for William Button and Son (Button, Sr., was also a Particular Baptist minister), and for Thomas Williams, an Independent commentator and lay preacher. Another British edition appeared in 1814. Affixed to the 1805 edition was a preface by Andrew Fuller entitled “An Essay on Truth” (pp. 5-30). For more on Adams, 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).