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.
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.
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.
Reverend Joshua Young (September 23, 1823- February 7, 1904), Unitarian minister who served five congregations throughout his lifetime, was best known as the clergyman who officiated at the funeral of abolitionist John Brown.
Elizabeth (Betsey) Ronalds (April 2, 1788-May 5, 1854) was an English horticultural illustrator, best remembered for the lithographs in her father Hugh Ronalds‘ renowned book Pyrus malus Brentfordiensis: or, a concise description of selected apples (1831). Her beautiful depictions of fruit and flowers enhanced the international reputation of her family’s nursery.
Harm Jan Huidekoper (April 3, 1776–May 22, 1854) was a businessman, philanthropist, essayist and lay theologian, a vice president of the American Unitarian Association, and a founder of the Meadville Theological School. Not well-known in the annals of American Unitarian history, he was nonetheless acquainted with many prominent Unitarians in his time.
Samuel Carter (May 15, 1805-January 31, 1878) was a lawyer who shaped the legal codification and business practices of the early railways in England. For nearly four decades he was solicitor to two of the corporations that created Britain’s rail network.…
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922-April 11, 2007) was an American novelist also known for short stories, essays, and plays. His writing often displays a darkly comic and satirical style revealing serious moral commentary, sometimes through the medium of science fiction.