Sir Adrian Cedric Boult (April 8, 1889-February 22, 1983) was one of the foremost British conductors of his time. Well-known for his advocacy and performance of the works of twentieth-century British composers, he was equally proficient in works of the standard repertoire.
Edward Everett Hale (April 3, 1822-June 10, 1909) was one of the most prominent American Unitarian ministers of the last half of the nineteenth century. He was also a popular journalist, editor, and author. His short story, “The Man Without A Country,” is an American masterpiece.
Lincoln Ashton Gribble (March 12, 1930-August 8, 2012) came from a family long associated with Unitarianism. From an early age he harbored the desire to become a Unitarian minister, a goal he finally reached after schooling at Manchester College in Oxford, England.…
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817-May 6, 1862) was a person of many talents and interests: surveyor, pencil-maker, naturalist, lecturer, schoolteacher, poet, anti-slavery activist, and spiritual seeker, to name but a few. He is best known as a member of the Transcendentalist circle of writers and religious radicals, and author of numerous books and essays, especially Walden and “Resistance to Civil Government,” better known as “Civil Disobedience.”…
Margaret Brackenbury Crook (May 5, 1886–May 24, 1972) was a British Unitarian minister, women’s suffragist, peace activist, and religious studies professor. She was the first English woman to be fully trained for the Unitarian ministry at Manchester College in Oxford, as well as one of the first English women to be granted sole authority over a large church.
Harold Hitz Burton (June 22, 1888-October 28, 1964) was a Unitarian layman, lawyer, and politician who served as Moderator of the American Unitarian Association (AUA). After three terms as mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, he was elected to the United States Senate and in 1945 appointed to the United States Supreme Court by President Truman.
Samuel Hoar (1778-November 2, 1856), a native of Lincoln, Massachusetts, and Sarah Sherman (1785-1862) of New Haven, Connecticut married in the fall of 1813 and made their home in Concord, Massachusetts. Both Samuel and Sarah were from distinguished families.
Dr. Joseph Workman (May 26, 1805-April 15, 1894), known as the “Father of Canadian Psychiatry,” was in 1845 the principal founder of the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto. He largely wrote the church’s constitution which affirms “the free exercise of private judgment in all matters of belief” and provides that “females” were to “exercise the same privileges as.
A. Eustace Haydon (1880-1975), a pioneer in the study of world religions, was a leader of the Humanist movement. Born in Canada, he was ordained to the Baptist ministry and served a Baptist church in Dresden, Ontario 1903-04.
Carolina Seymour Severance (January 12, 1820-November 10, 1914), called Caroline, was for nearly seventy years an active social reformer, organizer, church woman and club woman whose varied work changed the lives of countless of people. The eldest of five children born to Orson and Caroline Maria Clarke Seymour in Canandaigua, New York, Caroline and her family moved to nearby Auburn, New York after her father died an early death in 1824.
Jacob Frieze (1789-1880), a Universalist minister from New England, was an early missionary to North Carolina. After retiring from the ministry he became a Rhode Island political journalist, reporting on, and participating in, the events culminating in the Dorr War, 1842.
John Murray Forbes (February 23, 1813-October 12, 1898), a leading Boston businessman and philanthropist, financed and operated a great nineteenth century industrial empire. He and his investment group built a transcontinental railroad system, controlled the output of mines and forests, and sped the flow of people and goods throughout America.