George Jones Adams (c. 1811 – May 11, 1880) was the leader of a schismatic Latter Day Saint sect who led an ill-fated effort to establish a colony of Americans in Palestine.

In October 1843, church president Joseph Smith asked Adams to travel with apostle Orson Hyde as a missionary to Russia.

On June 7, 1844, Smith set apart Adams "to be an apostle and special witness ... to the empire of Russia", in preparation for the Mormon political kingdom.

[citation needed] After his excommunication, Adams came to accept the spiritual leadership of James J. Strang, and in December 1846 became editor of Star in the East, a Strangite publication printed in Boston.

Adams and his second wife, Louisa Isabella Pray, moved to Maine where they had two children, son Clarence and daughter Georgina Augustine.

Adams claimed to be a prophet of Jesus Christ to the world and began publication of a periodical called The Sword of Truth and Harbinger of Peace.

"[2] After migrating around the Northeast for some years, Adams settled in Indian River, Maine, and prophesied that the prerequisite the Second Coming was "the Jews' restoration to Palestine.

"[2] In 1865, Adams and Indian River's postmaster, Abraham McKenszie, traveled to Palestine and arranged for the purchase of a tract of land near Jaffa.

In February 1866, Adams was received by U.S. President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward at the White House.

By October 1867, the U.S. State Department had appropriated $3000 for the return of any of the remaining colonists who wished to leave Palestine, while by December 1867, the colony had run out of money and resources.

Some of the colonists traveled back to America on the ship Quaker City; Mark Twain was a passenger on the same journey and he wrote about the failed settlers in his 1869 book The Innocents Abroad.

The colonists who left would sell much of their real estate in the colony to newly arriving settlers, called Templers, coming from Württemberg in 1869.