Leslie Talbot Pennington (October 30, 1899-December 6, 1974), a Unitarian and Universalist minister who chaired the Unitarian Commission on Church Union, was throughout his career an active civic leader and organizer of pioneering church social action programs. He was especially prominent in advocating international peace and promoting neighborhood racial integration.…
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Susan Charlotte Barber Lloyd Jones (May 15, 1832-October 26, 1911) was the first wife of the Unitarian minister Jenkin Lloyd Jones and his “yoke-fellow in the cause of religious freedom.” Together they promoted the growth of the Western Unitarian Conference, wrote widely-adopted Sunday School curricula, created the first, much-imitated Unity Club, helped found organizations for Unitarian women and for Unitarian Sunday Schools, and encouraged women to serve as ministers in midwestern Unitarian churches.…
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William Roscoe (March 8, 1753-June 27, 1831) was a poet, historian, botanist, and politician who laid the foundation for the cultural flowering of Liverpool while opposing the slave trade, the main source of its prosperity. A prominent member of the Presbyterian (Unitarian) dissenting community, his political and social reform activities were strongly informed by his rational views of religion.…
Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (May 16, 1804-January 3, 1894), Mary Tyler Peabody Mann (November 16, 1807-February 11, 1887), and Sophia Amelia Peabody Hawthorne (September 21, 1809-February 26, 1871)—were champions of reform movements, pioneers in modern educational theory, founders of the kindergarten movement in America and supporters of the arts.…
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John Adams (October 30, 1735-July 4, 1826), first vice-president and second president of the United States, was a leader of the American Revolution, diplomat, and political theorist who did much to shape, explain and defend the United States Constitution.
Harry Toulmin (April 7, 1766-November 11, 1823), a Unitarian minister in Britain, emigrated across the Atlantic in search of religious freedom and tolerance. In America he had careers in education, government, and law. As a judge in the turbulent Mississippi Territory, he was able to use his influence to prevent warfare with the Spanish.
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.…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.