John Charles Godbey (September 26, 1927-November 5, 1999), a Unitarian Universalist minister, scholar, historian, and teacher, spent his entire professional life, 1962-96, as a faculty member at the Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago, Illinois. He also taught at the University of Chicago, with which Meadville/Lombard was associated.
William Brooks Rice (May 12, 1905-February 22, 1970), a Unitarian Universalist minister, was the chair of the Universalist and Unitarian Joint Merger Commission. An able negotiator, he was later recognized as “the chief architect” of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, William was the son of Jennie Brooks and architect Walter E.…
Mary Charlotte Ward Granniss Webster Billings (July 11, 1824-March 2, 1904) was a Universalist author, activist, and hymn writer. The wife of two Universalist ministers, she herself was ordained in 1892. Kind and generous, she exemplifies the nineteenth-century liberal missionary zeal that spread Universalism to the west.…
Richard Lloyd Jones (April 14, 1873-December 4, 1963), an outspoken and influential journalist, was the longtime owner and editor of the Tulsa Tribune. He was instrumental in creating the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site. He was also a founder of All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.…
Herman Bisbee (October 29, 1833-July 6, 1879) is best known as the only American Universalist minister to have been found guilty of heresy. After losing his Universalist fellowship, he became a Unitarian.
Herman was one of eight children of a Universalist farming family in West Derby (now Newport), Vermont.
William Roberts (1768-1838) (born Thiruvenkatam Vellala), a Tamil Unitarian missionary, educator, and writer, was the founder of the Madras Unitarian Christian Church. He engaged the support of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association (BFUA). His mission was for many years the focus of international Unitarian interest in India.…
Sir John Carter (before December 20, 1741-May 18, 1808), a Unitarian merchant, was on nine occasions Mayor of Portsmouth, the chief maritime port for the Royal Navy. He played a key role in defusing the crisis caused by the 1797 naval mutiny at Spithead.…
Jenkin Lloyd Jones (November 14, 1843-September 12, 1918), a pioneering Unitarian minister, missionary, educator, and journalist, expanded the ranks of midwestern Unitarians and built up much of the structure of the Western Unitarian Conference. He founded a major program church in Chicago, All Souls, together with its associated community outreach organization, the Abraham Lincoln Centre.…
Orello Cone (November 16, 1835-June 23, 1905), a Universalist minister and scholar, was a professor at the Theological School of St. Lawrence University and president of the Universalist Buchtel College. According to historian Russell Miller, “the greatest denominational contributions to religious scholarship in the late nineteenth century were made by Orello Cone in the field of Biblical criticism.”…
Jean Mayer (February 19, 1920-January 1, 1993), a renowned French-American scientist, physiologist, nutritionist, educator, was the tenth president of Tufts University. Under his visionary leadership this small, financially-strapped regional New England institution evolved into a major global educational center.
Robert Andrews Millikan (March 22, 1868-December 19, 1953), Nobel Prize-winning physicist and one of America’s best-known scientists in the early 20th Century, was a pioneering teacher and prolific textbook author, as well as a university administrator, science policy adviser, and fundraiser in support of scientific research.…
Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence (December 28, 1871-September 10, 1961), suffragist and Labour politician, was a member of the British Cabinet following World War II who worked to prepare for the independence of India.
Frederick was born into a wealthy family of London Unitarians, who were major house builders at the time of the capital’s great expansion.