John Charles Godbey (September 26, 1927-November 5, 1999), a Unitarian Universalist minister, scholar, historian, and teacher, spent his entire professional life, 1962-96, as a faculty member at the Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago, Illinois. He also taught at the University of Chicago, with which Meadville/Lombard was associated.
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.
Jenkin Lloyd Jones (November 14, 1843-September 12, 1918), a pioneering Unitarian minister, missionary, educator, and journalist, expanded the ranks of midwestern Unitarians and built up much of the structure of the Western Unitarian Conference. He founded a major program church in Chicago, All Souls, together with its associated community outreach organization, the Abraham Lincoln Centre.
Jean Mayer (February 19, 1920-January 1, 1993), a renowned French-American scientist, physiologist, nutritionist, educator, was the tenth president of Tufts University. Under his visionary leadership this small, financially-strapped regional New England institution evolved into a major global educational center.
Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence (December 28, 1871-September 10, 1961), suffragist and Labour politician, was a member of the British Cabinet following World War II who worked to prepare for the independence of India.
Frederick was born into a wealthy family of London Unitarians, who were major house builders at the time of the capital’s great expansion.
Henry Bergh (August 29, 1811-March 12, 1888) was the founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and was instrumental in the founding of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Lee Sullivan McCollester (June 5, 1859-December 26, 1943) was a Universalist minister, Professor of Religious Literature and Chaplain at Tufts College (now University), and the third Dean of its Crane Theological School. During his tenure he revitalized the school, reformed its curriculum to emphasize the practical side of ministry, and increased the size of the student body.
John Murray Atwood (September 25, 1869-November 4, 1951), a Universalist minister, educator, and denominational leader, served, for 37 years, as dean of the Canton Theological School of St. Lawrence University.
John (called Murray by his family) was born in a part of Brockton that is now in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
Isaac Morgan Atwood (March 24, 1838-October 26, 1917) was a Universalist minister, journalist, educator, and denominational leader. During the four decades spanning the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth he served successively as president of the Canton Theological School, the first General Superintendent of the Universalist General Convention, the Convention’s secretary, and professor of theology and philosophy at St.
Caroline Bartlett Crane (August 17, 1858-March 24, 1935) was a Unitarian minister, suffragist, civic reformer, and social gospel advocate. Among the first wave of American college-educated women, she broke gender barriers as a journalist, newspaper editor, and minister before leaving the ministry to develop a new career as a “municipal housekeeper”—applying “womanly” principles of housekeeping to the public sphere.
The Ballou family of New England produced some of the most well-known and distinguished American Universalists, including Hosea Ballou, the leading theologian and evangelist of early 19th-century Universalism; Hosea Ballou 2d, Universalist historian and first president of Tufts University; and Adin Ballou, a significant theorist of pacifism and the founder of the Hopedale utopian community.
Earl Morse Wilbur (April 26, 1866-January 8, 1956), a Unitarian minister and scholar, was an organizer, dean, and president of the Pacific Unitarian School for the Ministry (now Starr King School for the Ministry). His magisterial two-volume study, A History of Unitarianism, was the first comprehensive account of Unitarianism in both Europe and America.