Dana McLean Greeley (July 5, 1908-June 13, 1986), a Unitarian minister, peace activist, and civil rights leader, was the last president of the American Unitarian Association (AUA) and the founding president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).
Dana was born in Lexington, Massachusetts into a longtime Unitarian family.
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Raymond Bennett Bragg (October 10, 1902-February 15, 1979), a Unitarian minister and civic leader, played a key role in the making of the Humanist Manifesto and served as Director of the Unitarian Service Committee during the years following World War II.…
Caroline Wells Healey Dall (June 22, 1822-December 17, 1912), author, journalist, lecturer and champion of women’s rights, was a Unitarian community service worker, minister’s wife and lay preacher. She left valuable memoirs of her elders in the Transcendentalist movement and was heir to the mantle of Margaret Fuller as spokesperson for woman’s access to education and employment.
George Mortimer Pullman (March 3, 1831-October 19, 1897), best known for the palatial railroad sleeping and dining cars that bore his name, was a lifelong Universalist, a leading industrialist and one of the consummate industrial managers of the 19th century.
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Johannes Abraham Christoffel Fagginger Auer (August 6, 1882-March 3, 1964) was a Unitarian minister, author, professor of Church History and of the Philosophy of Religion at the Tufts College School of Religion, and Parkman Professor of Theology at the Harvard Divinity School.
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Ezra Stiles Gannett (May 4, 1801-August 26, 1871) was a prominent Unitarian minister, editor, and a founder of the American Unitarian Association (AUA). He was the colleague pastor, and successor, to William Ellery Channing at the Federal Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts.
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William Ellery Channing (April 7, 1780-October 2, 1842), minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston, Massachusetts, 1803-42, was a spokesman during the Unitarian controversy for those liberal—or Unitarian—churches within Massachusetts’ Standing Order of churches. His published sermons, lighting a path between orthodoxy and infidelity, were widely influential abroad as well as throughout the United States.…
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Joseph Chamberlain (July 8, 1836-July 2, 1914), a British industrialist, reformer, and statesman, was a key cabinet minister in Liberal and Conservative governments. In his early political career he was the chief founder of what is known as the ‘gas and water socialism’ movement in local government which improved the provision of utilities throughout Britain.
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Charles Nelson Vickery (February 10, 1920-March 26, 1972) was a Universalist and Unitarian Universalist minister, a social worker in the United States and post-World War II Europe. As Program Director of Volunteer Services for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee he thought “We can be the fulcrum, the dreamers, the economic resources to help remake a shattered world where [people] can find meaning to existence as well as merely survival.”
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Antoinette Louisa Brown Blackwell (May 20, 1825-November 5, 1921), a women’s rights activist and social reformer, was the first American woman to be ordained as minister by a congregation. Always ahead of her time, she with great difficulty broke trails that other women later more easily followed.
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Dorothy Tilden Spoerl (March 29, 1906-December 2, 1999) was a leading Universalist and Unitarian Universalist religious educator and parish minister from the time of her ordination in 1929 until well after her official retirement in 1973. In a tribute to her during his Fahs Lecture at the 1987 General Assembly, Henry Hampton said: “Thus far in her long and productive life of service, she has helped educate our children, build a denomination, save more than a few intellectual souls, and, without a doubt, she has changed the course of the world.
Richard Eddy (June 21, 1828-August 16, 1906), a Universalist minister, wrote an enduringly valuable two-volume history, Universalism in America, 1884-86.
Born and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, Richard was the son of Martha James and shoemaker Richard Eddy. His family belonged to the First Universalist Church in Providence.…