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.
Charles Rhind Joy (December 5, 1885- September 26, 1978) was a Unitarian minister, American Unitarian Association official, and an international humanitarian worker affiliated with the Unitarian Service Committee, Save the Children Federation, and CARE. He wrote popular articles for magazines and authored numerous books.
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.
Peter Charadon Brooks Adams (June 24, 1848-February 14,1927) was a lawyer, historian, and writer, who served as an informal adviser to President Theodore Roosevelt. Although reared Unitarian, he was agnostic for many years. Late in life he returned to the Unitarian fold at the family church in Quincy, Massachusetts.
Henry Wilder Foote (February 2, 1875-August 27, 1964) was a Unitarian minister, scholar, teacher, and hymnologist. As Chair of a joint Universalist and Unitarian commission on hymnals, he oversaw the editorial compilation and production of Hymns of the Spirit (1937) which became the standard hymnbook used by both groups up to their 1961 consolidation.
The journalist, historian, novelist, Henry Brooks Adams ( February 16, 1838-March 27, 1918) was the son of Civil War diplomat Charles Francis Adams and Abigail Brooks Adams. His grandfather, John Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States.
James Joseph Reeb (January 1, 1927-March 11, 1965) was a minister, social worker, and civil rights activist. His brutal murder by segregationists while participating in the second Selma to Montgomery march made him one of the martyrs of the American civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Albert Warren Stearns (January 26, 1885-September 24, 1959) was a medical doctor who did pioneering work in the fields of psychiatry and neurology. He also served as Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, was Dean of the Tufts College Medical School, taught sociology, and was active in his local community.
Judith Ripley Goodenough (October 25,1942-September 18, 1990), who wrote as J. B. Goodenough, was a Unitarian Universalist poet and musician.
Judith, also known as Judy, was born to Eva (Ripley) and Robert Fullerton Beach in Berea, Kentucky where her father was a librarian at Berea College.
Don Speed Smith Goodloe (June 2, 1878 – September 2, 1959), founding principal of what is now Bowie State University, was the first African-American graduate of Meadville Theological School, the Unitarian seminary in Meadville, Pennsylvania.
Goodloe was born in Lowell, Kentucky, in 1878.
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.