Stephen Rensselaer Smith (September 27, 1788-February 17, 1850) was a Universalist evangelist in the state of New York at a time when Universalism was rapidly growing in popularity, even as the population of the state was rapidly growing, with New Englanders migrating west along the Erie Canal.…
Georgene Esther Bowen (February 13, 1898-September 1984) was a Universalist missionary and social worker. She worked at the Blackmer Home for underprivileged girls in Japan and with girls clubs, settlement houses, and the elderly in the United States.
Florence Ellen Kollock Crooker (Jan. 18, 1848 to April 21, 1925) was a Universalist minister and advocate of temperance and women’s suffrage. A capable organizer who combined intellect and passion in her work she was one of the first ministers to serve both Universalist and Unitarian congregations.
Clarence J. Harris (March 16, 1873-November 27, 1941) was a minister who served both Universalist and Unitarian congregations. During the early years of the motion picture industry, he wrote hundreds of screenplays. He also organized military-style youth groups, animal welfare organizations, a screenwriter’s school, and summer camps for boys.
Bruce Wallace Brotherston (August 12, 1877-April 17, 1947) was a Universalist minister, author, and educator. After 16 years in the ministry he went on to teach philosophy, religious education, and philosophy of religion at St. Lawrence University and Tufts College for twenty-one more years.
Frank Oliver Hall (March 19, 1860-October 18, 1941) was an inspiring preacher and social gospeler who founded the Universalist Commission on Social Service. He served thirty-five years as minister of the Church of the Divine Paternity in New York City, and taught homiletics for thirteen years at Crane Theological School, Tufts College.
Orestes Augustus Brownson (Sept. 16, 1803-April 17, 1876) as a maverick Universalist and Unitarian minister, then an independently-minded journalist, essayist, and critic, was a wide-ranging commentator on politics, religion, society, and literature with connections to the Transcendentalist movement. Disillusioned with liberal religion and radical politics, in 1844 he converted to Roman Catholicism and became a Catholic intellectual, a constitutional conservative, and a fierce critic of Protestantism.…
John Mather Austin (September 26, 1805-December 20, 1880) was a preeminent Universalist clergyman, editor, author and social activist in New York State, whose most prolific period was the three decades surrounding the Civil War.
The son of Benjamin and Jerusha Mather Austin, he was descended from the New England cleric Increase Mather.
Alice Mildred Harrison (July 27, 1906-June 13, 1989), a religious educator, was a pioneering leader and organizer of youth programming and activities for the Universalist Church of America, the Council of Liberal Churches, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Mary Charlotte Ward Granniss Webster Billings (July 11, 1824-March 2, 1904) was a Universalist author, activist, and hymn writer. The wife of two Universalist ministers, she herself was ordained in 1892. Kind and generous, she exemplifies the nineteenth-century liberal missionary zeal that spread Universalism to the west.…
Herman Bisbee (October 29, 1833-July 6, 1879) is best known as the only American Universalist minister to have been found guilty of heresy. After losing his Universalist fellowship, he became a Unitarian.
Herman was one of eight children of a Universalist farming family in West Derby (now Newport), Vermont.
Frances Dana Barker Gage (October 12, 1808-November 10, 1884), a lecturer, political activist, journalist, and novelist, was an outspoken advocate of women’s rights, temperance, and abolition before and immediately after the Civil War.
Frances was born near Marietta, Ohio to frontier farmers Elizabeth Dana and Col.