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.…
John van Schaick, Jr. (November 18, 1873-May 16, 1949), Universalist parish and Social Gospel minister, was active in war relief in Europe during World War I and was influential as editor of the leading denominational periodical, the Universalist Leader (later renamed the Christian Leader) for nearly a quarter of a century.
Alfred Storer Cole (October 9, 1893-January 5, 1977) was a minister, scholar, writer, librarian of the Universalist Historical Society and, for a quarter century, teacher of Homiletics and Unitarian Universalist history at the School of Religion of Tufts University.
Smith Rensselaer Woolley (1840-March 7, 1886) was the son of Universalist minister Edward Mott Woolley and the brother of Lucia Fidelia Woolley Gillette, one of the first women ordained to the Universalist ministry. He was the father of Clarence Mott Woolley, a trustee and benefactor of St.
Lucia Fidelia Woolley Gillette (April 8, 1827-October 14, 1905) was one of the first women to be ordained to the Universalist ministry in the United States and probably the first ordained woman to preach in Canada. As a child she assisted her father, Edward Mott Woolley as he traveled his Universalist ministry circuit in New York.…
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.
Edward Mott Woolley (October 31, 1803-May 4, 1853) was an itinerant, circuit-riding Universalist minister in New York and Michigan. He was the father of Lucia Fidelia Woolley Gillette, one of the first women Universalist ministers and the grandfather of Clarence Mott Woolley, a prominent twentieth-century industrialist and a benefactor and trustee of St.
John Murray Spear (September 16, 1804-October 5, 1887), made his career as a Universalist minister, abolitionist, activist against the death penalty, and advocate for women’s rights, temperance, and many other nineteenth century reforms.
Charles Spear (May 1, 1803-April 13, 1863) took up the idea of abolishing the death penalty at a time when the idea was widely regarded as a hopelessly impractical, even utopian notion. For years Spear campaigned without stint to change public opinion and the laws, especially in Massachusetts and other New England states, but also throughout the country by means of his newspaper, The Prisoner’s Friend.
Henry Noble Couden (November 21, 1842 – August 22, 1922) was Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives for twenty-five years (1895-1921). After being blinded in a Civil War battle he returned to school to study for the Universalist ministry.
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.
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.…