Augusta Jane Chapin (July 16, 1836-June 30, 1905), Universalist minister and educator, was one of the earliest women to be ordained in ministry. She was the first woman to sit on the Council of the General Convention of Universalists.
Caleb Rich (August 12, 1750-October 18, 1821), one of the earliest New England Universalist preachers, was the first to proclaim that there would be no punishment in the afterlife. His preaching led to the conversion of Thomas Barns, later a pioneer preacher to Universalists in Maine, and also Hosea Ballou whose advocacy of Rich’s eschatology brought on the Restorationist controversy.
Benjamin Rush (December 24, 1745-April 19, 1813), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the most celebrated American physician and the leading social reformer of his time. He was a close friend of both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and corresponded with many of the prominent figures of the revolutionary generation.
John E. Wood (July 30, 1910-June 15, 1980), Universalist and Unitarian Universalist minister and denominational official, played a significant part, first in preparing the way for the Unitarian-Universalist consolidation, and then in raising environmental consciousness within the Unitarian Universalist denomination.
Carl Gerrard Seaburg (October 21, 1922-December 16, 1998) was a minister, scholar, writer, editor and long-time member of the staff of the Unitarian Universalist Association. He is best known in church circles as a hymn writer and as an editor and anthologist of liturgical materials.
Jesse Babcock Ferguson (January 19, 1819-September 3, 1870), a renowned orator and minister in the Antebellum South, converted to universalist and unitarian beliefs. His conversion created turmoil in his own large Nashville church and throughout the region.
The Universalist society in Oxford, Massachusetts, one of the earliest Universalist churches in America, hosted the conventions which led to the creation of the Universalist denomination. The church was founded and largely led by members of the extended Davis family, some two dozen siblings and first cousins, all grandchildren of Samuel Davis of Roxbury, Massachusetts (1681-1760) who settled in Oxford in 1729.
Albert Frederick Ziegler (March 29 1911-May 21, 1991), Universalist minister, theologian, and denominational official, played a significant part in redefining Universalism during the two decades leading to the merger of the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association in 1961.
Kenneth Leo Patton (August 25, 1911-December 25, 1994), identifed as one of the major poets and a prophet of contemporary liberal religion, was a voice for a poetic, naturalistic humanism at a time when most humanists were defining a religion of reason.
Edward Turner (July 28, 1776-January 24, 1853) ranked second only to Hosea Ballou among Universalist ministers of his generation. He was a denominational organizer, a celebrated preacher, and the first historian of Universalism. Close friends for over two decades, Turner and Ballou were alienated after 1815 and were opponents in the Restorationist controversy.
Angus Hector MacLean (May 9, 1892-November 11, 1969), Universalist minister, theological school professor and dean, played a major part in reshaping the philosophy and practice of religious education within the Universalist and Unitarian denominations during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.
Born in Gardner, Massachusetts, Abner was the sixth of ten children of Timothy and Moriah Stone Kneeland. His formal education stopped after a year in an academy in Chesterfield, New Hampshire. At the age of 21 Abner moved, with his older brother Asa, to Dummerston, Vermont in order to follow their father’s carpentry trade.