Founded in 1996 by Bonnie Hurd Smith, the Judith Sargent Murray Society is dedicated to honoring the life and legacy of the eighteenth-century essayist, poet, and playwright who was among America's earliest champions of female equality, education, economic independence, and political engagement. Judith Sargent Murray was the:

• first to claim female equality in the public prints
• first woman in America to self-publish a book, The Gleaner (1798)
• first American to have a play produced in Boston
• earliest known American Universalist author
• co-founder of a female academy
• only eighteenth century woman known to have kept letter books in a consistent manner