Charles Nelson Vickery (February 10, 1920-March 26, 1972) was a Universalist and Unitarian Universalist minister, a social worker in the United States and post-World War II Europe. As Program Director of Volunteer Services for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee he thought “We can be the fulcrum, the dreamers, the economic resources to help remake a shattered world where [people] can find meaning to existence as well as merely survival.”
Clara Barton (December 25, 1821-April 12, 1912) was both famous and honored in her lifetime—and has a well-earned place in American history—as the angel of Civil War battlefields and founder of the American Red Cross.
Clarissa Harlowe Barton, the fifth and youngest child of Sarah Stone and Stephen Barton, was born on Christmas Day, 1821, in Oxford, Massachusetts, a small farming community.
Hosea Ballou 2d (October 18, 1796-May 27, 1861), Universalist minister, scholar, educator, and journalist, was the grandnephew of the theologian and denominational leader Hosea Ballou. Ballou 2d played a crucial role defending the elder Ballou in the Restorationist controversy.
George de Benneville (July 26, 1703-March 19, 1793), a physician, was a universalist evangelist in Europe and an early advocate of the doctrine of universal salvation in the American colonies. He transmitted the heritage of German Pietist religious communities and the European Radical Reformation to a wider American public.
Abel Charles Thomas (July 11, 1807-September 27, 1880) was a Universalist evangelist, minister, journalist, and historian. Although he served the Universalist church in Philadelphia in two separate pastorates totaling nearly twenty-five years and there wrote two of the most celebrated pieces of nineteenth-century Universalist controversial literature, he is most remembered for his short pastorate in Lowell, Massachusetts, where, as one of the founders and editor of the literary magazine, the Lowell Offering, he was a mentor to aspiring writers amongst the young women working in the textile mills.
Alice Cary (April 26, 1820-February 12, 1871) and Phoebe Cary (September 4, 1824-July 31, 1871) were in their day well known and loved for their poetry and other writings. Alice also wrote prose sketches of rural Ohio and short stories.
Joseph Jordan (1842-1901), the first African American to be ordained as a minister by the Universalist denomination, founded the First Universalist Church of Norfolk, Virginia in 1887 and initiated an educational effort for African American children in Norfolk and vicinity.
David Pickering (May 28, 1788-January 6, 1859), a Universalist minister, founded the Providence Association, an organization which challenged the disciplinary authority of the New England Universalist General Convention. With Paul Dean and Adin Ballou, Pickering led a Restorationist faction of 19th century Universalists into schism and helped to found the short-lived sect, the Massachusetts Association of Universal Restorationists (MAUR).
The Humiliati, composed mostly of young Universalist ministers recently graduated from the School of Religion of Tufts College in Medford, Massachusetts, was organized in 1945 and met annually until 1954.
Elhanan Winchester (September 30, 1751-April 18, 1797), an outstanding revivalist, was the most wide-ranging and successful 18th century American Universalist evangelist. He founded the first Universalist church in Philadelphia and drew many to Universalism on his preaching tours throughout New England.
Caroline Augusta White Soule (September 3, 1824-December 6, 1903), a novelist, poet, religious writer, editor, and minister, was one of the founders and the first president of the earliest national organization of American church women, the Woman’s Centenary Aid Association.
Ellsworth C. Reamon (July 6, 1895-November 9, 1983), an active Universalist and Unitarian Universalist parish minister for 55 years, held a number of important denominational positions, including the presidency of the Universalist Church of America (UCA), and was a leader in the opposition to Unitarian-Universalist consolidation.