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Sears, Edmund Hamilton (1810-1876)

Known primarily for his authorship of the Christmas carol, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” Sears was also a pacifist and Biblical critic. He was born in Sandisfield, Massachusetts  on April 6, 1810 into a farming family. As a boy he worked the farm, attended village schools, and also Westfield Academy.…

Edmund Hamilton Sears

We Speak of Life: Responsive and Unison Materials for Religious Services and Assembly Programs

We Speak of Life

We Sing of Life: Songs for Children, Young People, & Adults

We Sing of Life by harvardsquarelibrary

Introduction to We Sing of Life and We Speak of Life

We Sing of Life: Songs for Children, Young People, & Adults

Vincent Silliman, Editor  |   Irving Lowens, Music Editor  |  Edward A. Karr, Calligraphy

We Sing of Life and We Speak of Life are  two liturgical resources that were published in the 1950s as a joint project of the Unitarian and Ethical Culture traditions, with involvement from Beacon Press, Starr King Press, and the American Ethical Union.

Fenn, William Wallace (1862-1932)

William Wallace Fenn was born in Boston on February 12, 1862. He was the only child of William Wallace and Hannah (Osgood) Fenn, who had but recently married and moved to Boston to make a hazard of new fortunes. The father had secured a position as clerk in the store of Cobb, Bates & Yerxa, but died seven weeks after the birth of his son.…

William Wallace Fenn

Chaffin, William Ladd (1837-1923)

Mr. Chaffin’s life was at once rich and uneventful. Its influence was pervasive and cumulative through fifty-five years in one community. The power of the man was not in what he said or did, but in what he was. It was the man behind the sermon or the pastoral call that gave both their peculiar value.…

Gannett, William Channing (1840-1923)

William Channing Gannett, born in Boston on March 13, 1840, was named after, and christened by, William Ellery Channing, the “founder of American Unitarianism.” His father, Ezra Stiles Gannett, had gone from the Harvard Divinity School to be Dr. Channing’s associate, and in 1842 became his successor at the old Federal Street Church (now the Arlington Street Church) in Boston.…

William Channing Gannett

Eliot, Thomas Lamb (1841-1936)

Thomas Lamb Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on October 1, 1841, and died in Portland, Oregon, on April 28, 1936, at the age of ninety-four and after sixty-eight years “of selfless service for the public weal.” He was descended from old Massachusetts family stocks which for nearly three hundred years have transmitted through successive generations a distinctive type of high intellectual and moral leadership.…

Thomas Lamb Eliot

Snow, Sydney Bruce (1878-1944)

Sydney Bruce Snow was born in Winchester, Massachusetts, March 16, 1878. His father was a descendant of early Cape Cod settlers. His mother, Helen Florence Winde, was of Danish ancestry. The family was associated with the Congregational Church in Winchester. Upon graduation from Harvard College in 1900, his literary bent led him into the field of journalism, and he went to work on the Boston Transcript. …

Sydney Bruce Snow

Calthrop, Samuel R. (1829-1917)

Samuel R. Calthrop was one of the most unique and vital personalities in the Unitarian Fellowship during the latter half of the nineteenth and the first years of the twentieth centuries. He was born on October 9, 1829, at Swineshead Abbey, Lincolnshire, the family home of the Calthrops for many generations.…

Samuel R. Calthrop