Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Adams, Amos

ADAMS, Amos, clergyman, b. in Medfield, Mass., 1 Sept., 1728; d. in Dorchester, 5 Oct., 1775. He was graduated at Harvard in 1752, and in September of the following year became pastor of a church in Roxbury, which he served until his death. He was secretary of the convention of ministers at Watertown, which in May, 1775, recommended the people to take up arms. Many of his sermons were published from 1756 to 1769, as well as two discourses on “Religious Liberty” (1767). The most notable of his writings were two discourses on the general fast, 6 April, 1769, in which he gave “A Concise Historical View of the Difficulties, Hardships, and Perils which Attended the Planting and Progressive Improvement in New England, with a Particular Account of its Long and Destructive Wars, Expensive Expeditions,” etc. (republished in London, 1770).