Partner Emma Sheridan Fry
Queer Places:
Carnegie Hall, 57th Street and, 7th Ave, New York, NY 10019, United States
North Plainfield Cemetery, 124 Norwich Rd, Plainfield, CT 06374, United States
Evangeline Smith Adams (February 8, 1868 – November 10, 1932) was born on February 8, 1868, in Jersey City, New Jersey, to George and Harriet Adams. Coming
from a conservative family and losing her father at just 15 months old, she defied her relatives' objections to begin studying astrology at the age of 18.
Before establishing her career as a full-time astrologer, she was engaged to a former employer named Mr. Lord, though she ultimately broke off the
engagement.
Adams built a thriving astrological consulting practice in New York City, eventually becoming known as America's first astrological superstar. Her business grew to employ multiple assistants and stenographers, and she served a high-profile clientele that included politicians, business potentates, and entertainment figures. Alongside her practice, she achieved widespread media prominence through popular books such as The Bowl of Heaven, Astrology: Your Place in the Sun, and Astrology: Your Place Among the Stars, as well as a widely followed radio show broadcast from 1930 to 1931. During her career, she famously employed the occultist Aleister Crowley as a ghostwriter, a collaboration that later involved complex copyright disputes.
Because fortune-telling was illegal in New York at the time, Adams was arrested three times in 1911, 1914, and 1923. She successfully defended her practice in court each time. Her May 1914 trial became legendary when she famously won over the judge by reading the horoscope of his son, leading to an acquittal and public praise for her skill.
While her career was marked by triumphant legal defenses and lucrative consultations, her predictive record drew mixed assessments. She claimed numerous high-profile successes, including predictions regarding World War II, King Edward VII, Enrico Caruso, and major shifts in the stock market. However, critics and economic analysts noted that her economic forecasts lacked factual grounding. Her advisory warnings to subscribers ahead of the 1929 stock market crash—urging investments shortly before the disaster—drew sharp criticism from skeptics who characterized her market predictions as generalized, fuzzy, and financially uninformed.
In her personal life, Adams married George Edwin Jordan, Jr. on April 12, 1923, in Manhattan. Private records and historical accounts also document that she was in a closeted, long-term relationship with the educator, suffragist, and dramatist Emma Viola Sheridan Fry.
Adams passed away on November 10, 1932, in Manhattan at the age of 64. She was initially interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx under her married name, Jordan, before her remains were later relocated to North Plainfield Cemetery in Connecticut.
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