William Joseph McEldowney (1889-1967) was an accountant and lawyer before switching—in mid-life—to the Unitarian ministry. Raised among Methodists and Presbyterians, he was in his forties when he started attending Unitarian services in Wellington, New Zealand. Attracted to the ministry, he enrolled at Manchester College, Oxford in England.…
Thomas Fyshe Palmer (July 1747-June 2, 1802) was one of five, eighteenth-century British political reformers, who came to be known as “The Scottish Martyrs”. Palmer was born in England, educated at Cambridge University, and ordained to the Anglican clergy before falling under the influence of Joseph Priestley.…
Helen Richmond Young Reid (December 11, 1869-June 8, 1941) was a Montreal social worker involved in local, national, and international reform movements. A life long Unitarian, she founded and directed a number of charitable and educational organizations. She served on government committees and she published articles and books in the fields of social welfare, public health, and immigration.…
Sir Francis Ronalds (February 21, 1788-August 8, 1873) – inventor, engineer and scientist – is known for building the first working electric telegraph and, while director of the Kew Observatory, the first successful continuously-recording camera. He was also arguably the first electrical engineer.
Eliza Anne McIntosh Reid (October 30, 1841-January 8, 1926) was a social reformer, women’s activist, and a leader in the movement to gain access to higher education for Canadian women. A life long Unitarian, her contributions would be continued and expanded by her daughter, Helen R.…
William Thomas (April 7, 1834-December 11, 1879) has been called “the founder of modern Unitarianism in Wales”. He was the minister at the Llwynrhydowen church, which, founded in 1733 as the first Arminian church in Wales, became an anchor of Unitarian religion in a small and isolated region of inland West Wales lying near the River Teifi, which separates Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire.…
Hone Tuwhare (October, 1922-January 16, 2008) was one of the leading poets of the twentieth-century. Building on his Māori and Scottish background, his poetry reflected, critiqued, and celebrated New Zealand culture and its people. He was a social justice advocate, a defender of the working class, and an advocate for the Māori.
Thomas Dawes Eliot (March 20, 1808-June 14, 1870) was a renowned Massachusetts attorney and a passionate progressive politician in the years leading up to and following the Civil War. A dedicated and capable Unitarian church leader, he served as president of both the National Conference of Unitarian Churches and the American Unitarian Association.…
Ernest Cassara (June 5, 1925-April 10, 2015) was a Unitarian and a Universalist minister, a scholar of American Universalism, and a professor of history. He taught at Tufts University, Goddard College, Albert Schweitzer College, and then for twenty years at George Mason University.
Owen Glenbrook Hansen (September 24, 1923-August 30, 2006) was born into a family with a strong tradition of independent thought: Pacifism and freethought on his father’s side; Unitarianism and vegetarianism on his mother’s. Raised on a farm in rural New Zealand during the Great Depression, he became proficient in a broad range of agricultural and mechanical pursuits.…
Charles Francis Adams Jr. (May 27, 1835-May 20, 1915) was a lawyer, writer, railroad regulator, arbitrator, journalist, railroad president, and soldier. Reared a Unitarian, his beliefs changed as he took stock of his life after the Civil War.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson (December 22, 1823-May 9, 1911) was one of the most distinguished and multi-talented Unitarians of the nineteenth-century, yet few people today are aware of his prominence or the extent of his interests and achievements. Minister, author, activist, lecturer, soldier, naturalist, physical fitness enthusiast—he was all of these things and more.…