In addition to the 1740-1900 biographies published both online and as a book, it is a joy to add to that collection by now presenting online the following additional portraits written by Mark W. Harris, minister of the historic first parish in Watertown, Massachusetts. He is the author of the Historical Dictionary of Unitarian Universalism (Scarecrow Press, Inc., Lanham, Maryland 20706)
—Herbert F. Vetter
About The Author: Mark Harris
Mark W. Harris was born in Winchendon, Massachusetts in 1951, and grew up in the nearby towns of Orange and New Salem. After graduating from Bates College (Maine) with a B.A. in 1973, he entered graduate school in history at the University of New Hampshire, where he earned an M.A. in 1975. He attended seminary at the Starr King School for the Ministry (California), and received an M.Div. in 1978. He has primarily been a parish minister during his career. His first pastorate was at St. Paul’s Universalist Church in Palmer, Massachusetts (1979-1985). Harris became the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Director of Information, the denominational historian and archivist in 1985. After that he served the First Parish in Milton, Massachusetts from 1989-1996, and he presently serves the First Parish of Watertown, Massachusetts, a congregation which dates from 1630. This is a position he first undertook as a co-pastorate with his wife Andrea Greenwood. Harris has also served brief ministries in Sheffield and London, England. He has taught in the summer at the Northeast Leadership School, and has also taught courses in history and congregational polity at Andover Newton Theological School and Starr King School for the Ministry. The author of many denominational pamphlets, including “Unitarian Universalist Origins: Our Historic Faith,” he has also published Among the Dry Bones (1983), a history of rural Unitarianism, co-edited Celebrating Easter: An Anthology of Unitarian Universalist Readings, with Carl Seaburg, and Historical Dictionary of Unitarian Universalism (2004).
He is the father of four boys: Joel, Levi, Dana and Asher.
Mark Harris is a director of the Harvard Square Library.