Evangeline Smith Adams Photo by Carnegie Hall Archives

Andover, Massachusetts-bred, Phillips- and Dartmouth-educated parents and family members gave Evangeline Adams a sense of pride at her level of literacy in the world of late nineteenth-century America. During a prolonged  adolescent illness, her physician and, later, mentor, Dr. J. Heber Smith, taught her astrology and left her with the advice, “Your horoscope denies you offpring of your own.  But it indicates that you are better able to rock the cradle of the world than the cradle of one child” (recounted in Karen Christino’s Foreseeing the Future, Evangeline Adams and Astrology in America).

Adams was born in Jersey City, NJ, where her father moved his family in order to begin­ manufacture of paper railroad-car wheels, an idea far ahead of its time. Unfortunately, the family funds were lost, and George Adams died shortly thereafter. 

Her mother’s death released Evangeline for her move from Boston to New York City.  At first turned away from the family’s regular hotel because of her wish to pursue astrology on the premises, she and her secretary found themselves on the pavement walking toward the Windsor Hotel. When she checked in and gave a horoscopic reading to the manager, she warned him to be cautious.

The next day’s headlines screamed that Evangeline Adams had predicted the great Windsor Hotel fire only the night before. Thus began her career as the foremost “astrologist” in America. 

Self-promotion made her famous, and with this came the inevitable for many astrologers of her and Alan Leo’s generation: arrest and imprisonment under heavy bond for “fortune telling.”   Upon her second arrest, she stated that she wished to legalize astrology in New York State.  Many argue the point, but basically she did so, going on to run an astrology empire consisting of private consultations, mail-order horoscopes, newspaper press conferences, and interviews, reaching a point of total national exposure with her own radio show, “Your Stars,” introduced by “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life!”

Her husband and business manager, George Jordan, responsible for her meteoric public rise in visibility and wealth was claimed by many (according to the page-turner by Christo) to be a “convenient” husband, somewhat ruthless in business practices, and with several personal habits that made enemies for Adams.

Her body of work in print is small, much of it contested by her “ghostwriter,”  Aleister Crowley, a little known fact until many years later, whose own The General Principles of Astrology (Red Wheel/Weiser, 2002; reprinted from Ordo Templi Orientis) bitterly satirizes Adams as a “fraud,” cleverly disguised as an “essay” on the subject of faked horoscopes.

Evangeline Smith Adams died November 10, 1932 (of a cerebral hemorrhage) at 4:00pm in her office/home in New York City. She was 64 years of age.