Roger Frederick Etz (April 30, 1886-December 19, 1950) was a parish minister and a major figure in the Universalist denomination for forty years. He was Executive Secretary and General Superintendent of the Universalist General Convention, 1919-37. During a period of rapid denominational decline, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, he kept American Universalism a functioning organization, which made possible consolidation with the American Unitarian Association in 1961.…
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772-July 25, 1834) was a poet, philosopher, and romantic visionary, an inescapable presence in early 19th-century England. John Stuart Mill coupled him with Jeremy Bentham (another man often claimed as a Unitarian) as “the two great seminal minds of England of their age.”…
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor Read More »
Leon Milton Birkhead (April 28, 1885-December 1, 1954), a controversial Methodist and Unitarian minister, achieved national prominence in the 1940s as director of the Friends of Democracy in New York. From the late 1930s through the early 1950s, he battled those, on the right and the left, who spread totalitarian propaganda.…
Birkhead, Leon Milton Read More »
Edvard Grieg (June 15, 1843-September 4, 1907), considered Norway’s greatest composer, was the first to create an internationally celebrated body of musical works inspired by the folk-heritage and culture of Norway. Although most of his compositions were solo songs and short pieces for the piano, he contributed a few enduring Romantic-era classics to the orchestral and chamber repertoires.
Grieg, Edvard and Nina Read More »
Amos Bronson Alcott (November 29, 1799-March 4, 1888), educator, philosopher, utopian, and visionary, ran the progressive Temple School in Boston, founded the Fruitlands community in Harvard, Massachusetts, and led many public Socratic “conversations.” Although he belonged to no church, Alcott was influential both in the Transcendentalist wing of Unitarianism and in the Free Religion movement which followed.
Alcott, Abigail and Bronson Read More »
Emily Howard Jennings Stowe (May 1, 1831-April 30, 1903), a path-breaking Canadian woman physician and suffragist, led campaigns to provide women access to medical schools and other professional education. Her efforts led to the organization of the woman’s movement in Canada and to the foundation of a medical college for women.
Thomas Jefferson Sawyer (January 9, 1804-July 24, 1899), Universalist minister and educator, is best known for successfully promoting the establishment of Universalist colleges and seminaries. Tufts College and its Divinity School, and St. Lawrence University and Theological School, were largely established as a result of his persistent efforts.…
Sawyer, Thomas Jefferson Read More »
Thomas Handasyd Perkins (December 15, 1764-January 11, 1854) was a successful China trade merchant, a philanthropist, an important Boston Federalist, a leader in the cultural life of Boston, and the founding patron of the world-renowned Perkins School for the Blind. He was a faithful member of the congregation of the Federal Street Church during the ministries of Jeremy Belknap, William Ellery Channing, and Ezra Stiles Gannett.…
Perkins, Thomas Handasyd Read More »
John Boyden (May 14, 1809-September 28, 1869), a Universalist minister, politician, and social reformer, was a disciple of Hosea Balou and the longtime pastor of the First Universalist Church of Woonsocket, Rhode Island. He worked prominently there for public education, temperance, abolition, and new forms of medical treatment.
Ada Harriet Miser Kepley (February 11, 1847-June 13, 1925), an energetic women’s suffragist, temperance advocate, and Unitarian minister, was the first American woman to graduate from law school. A friend of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) president Frances E.
Kepley, Ada Harriet Miser Read More »
Mary Augusta Arnold (Mrs Humphry Ward) (June 11, 1851-March 26, 1920) was an enormously successful novelist in her time, whose work is largely concerned with religious and political issues. She also pioneered modern child day-care. Never affiliated with the Unitarians, she nevertheless lectured at their churches, attended liberal services, and discussed with Unitarians their style of worship and the content of their faith.…
Ward, Mary Augusta Read More »
Henry Whitney Bellows (June 11, 1814-January 30, 1882) was minister of the First Congregational Church of New York City (now the Unitarian Church of All Souls), 1838-82. During the Civil War he was president of the United States Sanitary Commission. In the course of traveling for the Sanitary Commission he visited a great many Unitarian churches and recognized that Unitarian congregations’ traditionally informal modes of cooperation no longer met the needs of a fast-changing American society.…
Bellows, Henry Whitney Read More »