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.
John Bird Wilkins (ca 1849-1938) was a minister, teacher, inventor, and newspaperman. For a year or two he was a Unitarian minister. Little is known of his early life; no birth date, no mother’s name, no father’s name, no school records, and no places of residence.
John Adams (October 30, 1735-July 4, 1826), first vice-president and second president of the United States, was a leader of the American Revolution, diplomat, and political theorist who did much to shape, explain and defend the United States Constitution.
Harry Toulmin (April 7, 1766-November 11, 1823), a Unitarian minister in Britain, emigrated across the Atlantic in search of religious freedom and tolerance. In America he had careers in education, government, and law. As a judge in the turbulent Mississippi Territory, he was able to use his influence to prevent warfare with the Spanish.
Hannah Adams (Oct. 2, 1755-Dec. 15, 1831) born in Medfield MA, she was the first American, man or woman, known to attempt to support herself by the pen. Highly regarded in the field of historical documentation, she wrote several history books.
Andrew Yoshinobu Kuroda (December 29, 1906-February 19, 1997), the first an* ordained Unitarian minister of Japanese ancestry in the United States, served the Japanese Unitarian Fellowship at All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C. He was also, for thirty-five years, a cataloguer, bibliographer, reference librarian, and head of the Japanese Section at the Library of Congress.
Alphonso Taft (November 5, 1810-May 21, 1891), one of Cincinnati’s most prominent citizens and among Ohio’s most highly regarded 19th-century attorneys and jurists, wrote an influential dissent on Ohio’s “Bible in the Schools Case.” He was the progenitor of a family politically influential in both Ohio and Washington.
Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk (1850-1923), first First Lady of Czechoslovakia, was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her father was Rudolph Garrigue, a businessman of Huguenot background whose parents and sister were Unitarian. Her mother was Charlotte Lydia Whiting, whose interest in transcendentalism led her to write to Ralph Waldo Emerson and be in contact with Brook Farm.
Alfred Tredway White (May 28, 1846-January 29, 1921), housing reformer and philanthropist, was known as “the great heart and mastermind of Brooklyn’s better self.” Forty years a deacon and twenty years a trustee of the First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn, White’s reforming work in housing grew directly from his church’s social service project and was deeply informed by his sense of religious duty and compassion.
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.
James Henry Ecob (September 4, 1844-November 6, 1921) was a minister in Unitarian, Presbyterian, and Congregational churches, and participated in and advocated for interdenominational worship and co-ordination for most of his career. He served as a minister of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, 1901-07, and was the first minister at the Unitarian Congregation of Queens in Flushing, New York where he served 1907-19.