John Murray (December 10, 1741-September 3, 1815), a preacher from the British Isles, became the most widely-known and respected voice of American Universalism during the last three decades of the eighteenth century. The legal conflict surrounding his ministry was instrumental in undermining the monopoly of the established church in Massachusetts and in bringing about the legal organization of the first Universalist churches in New England.
Peter Charadon Brooks Adams (June 24, 1848-February 14,1927) was a lawyer, historian, and writer, who served as an informal adviser to President Theodore Roosevelt. Although reared Unitarian, he was agnostic for many years. Late in life he returned to the Unitarian fold at the family church in Quincy, Massachusetts.
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Henry Wilder Foote (February 2, 1875-August 27, 1964) was a Unitarian minister, scholar, teacher, and hymnologist. As Chair of a joint Universalist and Unitarian commission on hymnals, he oversaw the editorial compilation and production of Hymns of the Spirit (1937) which became the standard hymnbook used by both groups up to their 1961 consolidation.
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Stephen Fritchman (May 12, 1902-May 30, 1981) was a Unitarian minister. During the 1940s, he was Director of Youth Work and editor of The Christian Register for the American Unitarian Association (AUA). After being ousted as editor in 1947 in a dispute over editorial supervision of the Register (The Fritchman Affair), he returned to the pulpit as minister at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles.…
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Lon Ray Call (October 6, 1894-October 7, 1985) was a Unitarian minister and denomination official best known for his evangelism. Instrumental in the development of the fellowship movement, he spent much of his professional life on the move, giving sermons, organizing churches and founding lay-led fellowships.…
The journalist, historian, novelist, Henry Brooks Adams ( February 16, 1838-March 27, 1918) was the son of Civil War diplomat Charles Francis Adams and Abigail Brooks Adams. His grandfather, John Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States.
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William Phillip Jenkins (October 28, 1911-December 13, 1985) was a Unitarian minister active in denominational leadership. He was influencial in the development of Unitarianism in Canada after World War II and active in the 1961 consolidation of the Unitarians and the Universalists.…
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Seth Curtis Beach (August 8, 1837-January 30, 1932) was a Unitarian minister, author, poet and hymnist.
He was born in western New York State to Luther Markham and Angelina Elizabeth (Curtis) Beach. The family lived in a log cabin they had built on a fifty acre farm near the village of Marion, New York.…
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Seth Chandler (December 2, 1806-October 4, 1889) was a Universalist minister, one of the leaders of the Restorationist Controversy within the denomination, minister of the First Parish Congregational Society (Unitarian) in Shirley, Massachusetts for forty-five years, and the author of the first significant history of the town.…
James Joseph Reeb (January 1, 1927-March 11, 1965) was a minister, social worker, and civil rights activist. His brutal murder by segregationists while participating in the second Selma to Montgomery march made him one of the martyrs of the American civil rights movement of the 1960s.
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Stephen Rensselaer Smith (September 27, 1788-February 17, 1850) was a Universalist evangelist in the state of New York at a time when Universalism was rapidly growing in popularity, even as the population of the state was rapidly growing, with New Englanders migrating west along the Erie Canal.…
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Albert Warren Stearns (January 26, 1885-September 24, 1959) was a medical doctor who did pioneering work in the fields of psychiatry and neurology. He also served as Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, was Dean of the Tufts College Medical School, taught sociology, and was active in his local community.
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