Thomas Gibson (September 5, 1777-July 1, 1863) and his only surviving son Thomas Field Gibson (March 3, 1803-December 12, 1889) were prominent silk manufacturers in Spitalfields, in London’s East End, during the industrial revolution. Developing keen interest and influence in political, economic, industrial, and social reform they developed programs to support working people through useful education, improved living conditions, and pastoral care.…
Hannah Adams (Oct. 2, 1755-Dec. 15, 1831) born in Medfield MA, she was the first American, man or woman, known to attempt to support herself by the pen. Highly regarded in the field of historical documentation, she wrote several history books.
Andrew Yoshinobu Kuroda (December 29, 1906-February 19, 1997), the first an* ordained Unitarian minister of Japanese ancestry in the United States, served the Japanese Unitarian Fellowship at All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C. He was also, for thirty-five years, a cataloguer, bibliographer, reference librarian, and head of the Japanese Section at the Library of Congress.
Alphonso Taft (November 5, 1810-May 21, 1891), one of Cincinnati’s most prominent citizens and among Ohio’s most highly regarded 19th-century attorneys and jurists, wrote an influential dissent on Ohio’s “Bible in the Schools Case.” He was the progenitor of a family politically influential in both Ohio and Washington.
Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1923), first First Lady of Czechoslovakia, was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her father was Rudolph Garrigue, a businessman of Huguenot background whose parents and sister were Unitarian. Her mother was Charlotte Lydia Whiting, whose interest in transcendentalism led her to write to Ralph Waldo Emerson and be in contact with Brook Farm.
Alfred Tredway White (May 28, 1846-January 29, 1921), housing reformer and philanthropist, was known as “the great heart and mastermind of Brooklyn’s better self.” Forty years a deacon and twenty years a trustee of the First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn, White’s reforming work in housing grew directly from his church’s social service project and was deeply informed by his sense of religious duty and compassion.
Alfred Storer Cole (October 9, 1893-January 5, 1977) was a minister, scholar, writer, librarian of the Universalist Historical Society and, for a quarter century, teacher of Homiletics and Unitarian Universalist history at the School of Religion of Tufts University.
James Henry Ecob (September 4, 1844-November 6, 1921) was a minister in Unitarian, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches, and participated in and advocated for interdenominational worship and co-ordination for most of his career. He served as a minister of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 1901-07, and was the first minister at the Unitarian Congregation of Queens in Flushing, New York where he served 1907-19.
Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz (December 5, 1822-June 27, 1907) was an early advocate for the education of women. However, she was conservative about women’s rights. Instrumental in the founding of the Harvard Annex—later Radcliffe College, she would serve as its first president.
George Leonard Chaney (December 24, 1836-April 19, 1922) was an established New England Unitarian minister whose major contribution to Unitarianism was his work in the southern United States following the Civil War. Although his orthodox Liberal Christian theology placed him on the conservative end of the Unitarian spectrum, he was a visionary who brought Unitarianism to the south.
Edward Williams (1747-1826) was one of the most influential and controversial figures Wales has produced. Raised Anglican, Williams as a young man enjoyed connections with liberal Anglican ministers. When Unitarianism later separated from the state-sponsored church, he associated himself with prominent English Unitarians and became a leading ally of Thomas Evans (Tomos Glyn Cothi), the first avowedly Unitarian minister preaching in Wales.
Elizabeth Blackwell (February 23, 1821-May 31, 1910) was the first woman to earn a degree from medical school in the United States and the first woman to appear on the medical registry of the United Kingdom.