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.
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.
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.
Alfred McClung Lee (August 23, 1906-May 19, 1992) and Elizabeth Briant Lee (September 9, 1908-December 9, 1999) were leading 20th-century sociologists who published breakthrough studies of propaganda, race, and media. They also authored textbooks; founded two professional organizations and were outspoken advocates for freedom, democracy and equality.
Clarence J. Harris (March 16, 1873-November 27, 1941) was a minister who served both Universalist and Unitarian congregations. During the early years of the motion picture industry, he wrote hundreds of screenplays. He also organized military-style youth groups, animal welfare organizations, a screenwriter’s school, and summer camps for boys.
Ephraim Nute, Jr. (September 18, 1819-January 21, 1897), an outspoken and aggressive abolitionist, was the American Unitarian Association (AUA) missionary to the Kansas territory during the “Bleeding Kansas” years prior to the Civil War. A conductor on the Underground Railroad, he was a key figure in the free state cause.
Francis Ellingwood Abbot (November 6, 1836-October 23, 1903), a founder of the Free Religious Association and first editor of the radical journal, the Index, developed an evolutionary philosophy of science. He yearned to free humankind from pre-scientific religions, believing that people could escape the trap of agnosticism by adopting his vision of free religion.
Leonard Mason (February 7, 1912-December 26, 1995), a British Unitarian humanist minister, who served churches in England and in Montreal, Quebec, was one of the outstanding preachers and public speakers of his generation.
Born in Meadow Cottage, Ainsworth, Lancashire in 1912, Leonard was the youngest of three brothers.