Author: Sampson, Joseph A. H.
Biography:
SAMPSON, Joseph Adam Hall (1805-25: Remains)
All the available information about him is contained in the volume of his Remains, posthumously published with a biographical Preface by his father Proctor Sampson (c. 1772-1855). Proctor's son was born in Marshfield MA and named Adam Hall Sampson after his maternal grandfather Adam Hall. But his mother, whose first name is not known, died when he was five and his sister about eight. Three years later--1814 by this account though church records suggest it might have been 1817 or later--his father took the children to join a Shaker community in New Lebanon NY. At that point, Adam took the name Joseph Sampson. He developed a "pulmonary complaint" in the spring of 1825 and his father took him to Plymouth for the sea air in the summer. His health seemed to improve but he died after their return. Proctor Sampson became an Elder in the community in 1832, lived in several of their settlements, and wrote an account of his spiritual practice, "Reasons for Uniting with the Shakers," that was first published from manuscript in 2018. (Remains [1827]; American Communal Societies Quarterly 12:1 [2018] 28-47; Shaker Museum, Mount Lebanon shakerml.org 27 Aug. 2020) HJ