1735 – Adams Streeter was born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Though he started his preaching career as a Baptist, he traveled in a circuit in central Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island preaching universal salvation. He helped John Murray organize a Universalist society in Boston and preached there to general acceptance.…

1846 – Robert Aspland died at age 63. He was a staunch defender of Unitarian Christianity and an early leader of the movement. For 23 years, Aspland edited the Unitarian journals The Monthly Repository and The Christian Reformer. He worked to reform laws that persecuted Dissenters from the Church of England, and for humanitarian causes, particularly education and relief for the poor.…

1548 – The priest John Assheton was summoned before Archbishop Thomas Cranmer at Lambeth Palace to answer charges of Unitarianism. Although Assheton subsequently recanted and survived, he was the first Englishman convicted for Unitarian ideas.…

1816 – John Disney, a leading Unitarian scholar, died at age 70. He became Unitarian after leaving the Church of England and succeeded Theophilus Lindsey as minister of Essex Street Chapel in London. He worked for repeal of all laws restricting liberty of conscience.…

1642 – Issac Newton was born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. A genius in mathematics and physics, he invented calculus and worked on optical theory. Newton’s writings show that he was Unitarian in his theology. He was professor at Cambridge University, held various posts with the government, and served as a member of Parliament.…

1745 – Benjamin Rush was born near Philadelphia. He was physician general during the Revolutionary War but resigned over differences with George Washington. He signed the Declaration of Independence and was a cofounder of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery.…

1851 – Mary Augusta Safford was born in Quincy, Illinois. She was the founder and minister of the Unitarian church in Hamilton, Illinois and minister in four other churches in Illinois and Iowa. She was president of the Iowa Unitarian Association and also served as the director of the Women’s Unitarian Conference.…

1823 – Thomas Wentworth Higginson was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He served as a Unitarian minister in Newburyport, Massachusetts and the free church in Worcester, Massachusetts, but left ministry to devote himself full time to the abolition of slavery. He led a raid on the Boston Court House to free fugitive slave Anthony Burns and became a supporter of John Brown.…

1563 – The anti-Trinitarian Bernardino Ochino was expelled from Zurich, Switzerland, at age 76 and in the middle of winter, for publication of Dialogues (1531). He had become a Unitarian late in life, and had spent 1547 to 1553 in exile in England under Edward VI.…

1697 – Thomas Firmin, a friend of John Biddle, died at age 65. He was a Unitarian leader during most of the 17th century. He wrote Unitarian tracts and books and was generous to Unitarian causes and victims of persecution.…