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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.…
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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.…
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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.…
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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.