Unitarian and Universalist Women

Listed in order of their birth years. American unless otherwise indicated.

Anne Bradstreet 1612-1672 Nonconformist

(poet, writer; descendents include Unitarians William Ellery Channing, Wendell Phillips, Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Anna Laetitia Aiken Barbauld 1743-1825 Unitarian (British)

(activist, poet -more-)

Judith Sargent Murray 1751-1820 Universalist

(poet and author; wrote essay on feminism: 1790 "On the Equality of the Sexes" (Rossi, 1973))

Mary Wollstonecraft 1759-1797 Unitarian; married Unitarian minister

(author, wrote "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" 1792, and Maria or the Wrongs of Woman; daughter was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author.)

Mary Moody Emerson 1774-1863 Unitarian

(writer; many of her unpublished writings foreshadow the ideas of her nephew, Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Maria Cook 1779-1835 Universalist

(jailed after preaching Universalism)

Lucy Barnes 1780-1809 Universalist

(Universalist writer, poet)

Eliza Lee Cabot Follen 1787-1860 Unitarian

(children's author, abolitionist; she, with husband Charles Follen, Harvard German instructor, introduced the Christmas tree custom to America)

Eliza Farrar 1791-1870 Quaker, Unitarian

(children's author, abolitionist)

Lucretia Mott 1793-1880 Quaker, Free Religious Association

(reformer: abolition, feminism, peace, temperance, liberal religion; cousin of Phebe Hanaford)

Frederika Bremer 1801-1865 Unitarian (Swedish)

(novelist, feminist, pacifist)

Harriet Martineau 1802-1876 British Unitarian

(writer, social critic, journalist, feminist)

Lydia Maria Francis Child 1802-1880 Unitarian

(author, abolitionist, reformer; wrote An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans and "Over the River and Through the Woods")

Dorothea Lynde Dix 1802-1887 Unitarian

(mental health reformer, prison reformer, poet)

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody 1804-1894 Unitarian, Transcendentalist

(teacher, author, reformer; sister to Mary Peabody Mann and Sophia Peabody Hawthorne; close associate of William Ellery Channing)

Sarah Flower Adams 1805-1848 Unitarian (British)

(hymn writer: Nearer My God to Thee)

Mary Tyler Peabody Mann 1806-1887 Unitarian

(educator; also married to Horace Mann and sister to Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Sophia Peabody Hawthorne)

Maria Weston Chapman 1806-1885 Unitarian

(abolitionist)

Mary Carpenter 1807-1877 Unitarian (British)

(abolitionist, teacher, juvenile justice reformer)

Sophia Peabody Hawthorne 1809-1871 Unitarian

(author and writer; also married to Nathaniel Hawthorne and sister to Elizabeth Parker Peabody and Mary Peabody Mann)

Fanny Kemble 1809-1893 Unitarian (British)

(poet, Shakespearean actress; author of "Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39")

Margaret Fuller 1810-1850 Unitarian, Transcendentalist

Elizabeth Gaskell 1810-1865 Unitarian

(writer, reformer, also wife of Unitarian minister William Gaskell)

Ellen Sturgis Hooper 1812-1848 Transcendentalist Unitarian

(poet, sister of Caroline Sturgis Tappan)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815-1902 Unitarian

(suffragist, organizer, writer, co-author of The Woman's Bible, mother of Harriot Stanton Blatch)

Lydia Moss Bradley 1816-1908 Unitarian and Universalist

(educator, philanthropist, founded Bradley University)

Charlotte Saunders Cushman 1816-1876 Unitarian

(actor)

Lucy Stone 1818-1893 Unitarian

(feminist, suffragist, abolitionist; married Henry Brown Blackwell whose sisters were Elizabeth Blackwell and Emily Blackwell and whose brother Samuel Blackwell married Antoinette Brown Blackwell. Mother of Alice Stone Blackwell.)

Sallie Holley 1818-1893 Unitarian

(abolitionist, educator)

Maria Mitchell 1818-1889 Unitarian

(astronomer (portrait))

Caroline Sturgis Tappan 1819-1868 Transcendentalist Unitarian

(poet, children's author, sister of Ellen Sturgis Hooper)

Julia Ward Howe 1819-1910 Unitarian, Free Religious Association

(writer, poet, abolitionist, social reformer; author of Battle Hymn of the Republic; promoter of Mother's Day for Peace; mother of Laura E. Richards and married to Samuel Gridley Howe, founder of the Perkins School for the Blind, researcher)

Lydia Pinkham 1819-1883 Universalist (eclectic)

(patent medicine inventor, businesswoman, advertising writer, advice columnist)

Florence Nightingale 1820-1910 British Unitarian

(nurse; founded nursing as a modern profession; mathematician: invented the pie chart)

Mary Ashton Rice Livermore 1820-1905

(lecturer, suffragist, temperance advocate, helped organize Civil War Sanitation Commission)

Susan Brownell Anthony 1820-1906 Unitarian and Quaker

(reformer, suffragist)

Alice Cary1820-1871 Universalist

(author, poet, abolitionist, suffragist; sister of Phoebe Cary)

Clara Barton 1821-1912 Universalist

(Red Cross founder)

Elizabeth Blackwell 1821-1910 Unitarian and Episcopalian

(physician, sister of Emily Blackwell, of Samuel Blackwell, married to Antoinette Brown Blackwell, and of Henry Blackwell, married to Lucy Stone)

Caroline Wells Healey Dall 1822-1912 Unitarian

(reformer, author)

Frances Power Cobbe 1822-1904 Unitarian (British)

(feminist, anti-vivisectionist)

Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz 1822-1907 Unitarian

(scientist, author, educator, first president of Radcliffe College; married to Louis Agassiz)

Sarah Hammond Palfrey 1823-1914

(writer; daughter of John Gorham Palfrey

Phoebe Cary 1824-1871 Universalist

(poet, abolitionist, suffragist; sister of Alice Cary)

Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney 1824-1904 Universalist, Unitarian, Free Religious Association

(civil rights activist, suffragist, editor)

Antoinette Brown Blackwell 1825-1921 Congregational and Unitarian minister

(minister, author, lecturer: first woman ordained as a Protestant minister in the US by a "recognized denomination"; later married Samuel Blackwell, brother of Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell and of Henry Blackwell, married to Lucy Stone)

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 1825-1911 Unitarian

(writer, poet, abolitionist, feminist, temperance advocate) [portrait]

Emily Blackwell 1826-1910 Unitarian

(physician, sister of Elizabeth Blackwell, of Samuel Blackwell, married to Antoinette Brown Blackwell, and of Henry Blackwell, married to Lucy Stone)

Matilda Joslyn Gage 1826-1898 Unitarian

(suffragist, reformer; her daughter Maud married L. Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz.) (Gage retained her membership in the Baptist church; later became a Theosophist.)

Maria Cummins 1827-1866 Unitarian

(author)

Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon 1827-1891Unitarian (British)

(feminist)

Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford 1829-1921 Universalist

(minister, author, poet, suffragist; cousin of Lucretia Mott)

Abigail May Williams 1829-1888

Emily Dickinson 1830-1886 Transcendentalist

(poet; Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Unitarian minister, was an important figure in her career.]

Helen Hunt Jackson 1830-1885 Transcendentalist

(author; proponent of Indian rights) (no church connection as an adult)

Louisa May Alcott 1832-1888 Transcendentalist

(author, poet; best known for Little Women)

Jane Andrews 1833-1887 Unitarian

(educator, children's author)

Rebecca Sophia Clarke 1833 -1906 Unitarian

(children's author)

Annie Adams Field 1834-1915 Unitarian

(author, literary hostess, charity worker; married to James Fields, editor of the Atlantic; after his death lived with Sarah Orne Jewitt, author)

Olympia Brown 1835-1926 Universalist

(minister, suffragist)

Augusta Jane Chapin 1836-1905 Universalist

(minister, activist; one of the chief organizers of the Parliament of the World's Religions, 1893, especially of participation of many women of a variety of faiths in this event.)

Ada C. Bowles 1836-1928 Universalist

(suffragist, abolitionist, temperance supporter, home economist)

Fanny Baker Ames 1840-1931 Unitarian

(charity organizer; suffragist, teacher; leader of the Unitarian Women's Auxiliary Conference)

Charlotte Champe Stearns Eliot 1843-1929 Unitarian

(author, reformer; father-in-law was William Greenleaf Eliot, Unitarian minister and founder of Washington University, St. Louis; son was T.S. Eliot, poet)

Eliza Tupper Wilkes 1844-1917

Emma Eliza Bailey 1844-1920 Universalist

(Universalist minister)

Celia Parker Woolley 1848-1919 Unitarian, Free Religious Association

(minister, social reformer)

Anna Carpenter Garlin Spencer 1851-1931 Free Religious Association

(minister, writer, educator, NAACP founder, social reformer; also wife of Unitarian minister William B. Spencer) (associated with Unitarian, Universalist and Ethical Culture congregations, she did not consider herself a "member" of these but identified with the broader "free religion")

Mary Augusta Safford 1851-1927 Unitarian

(minister)

Eleanor Elizabeth Gordon 1852-1942 Unitarian

(minister)

Maud Howe Elliott 1854-1948 Unitarian

(author, social reformer; daughter of Julia Ward Howe)

Maria Baldwin 1856-1922 Unitarian

(educator, reformer, first African American woman principal)

Harriot Eaton Stanton Blatch 1856-1940 Unitarian

(suffragist; daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton)

Alice Stone Blackwell 1857-1950 Unitarian

(suffragist, reformer; daughter of Lucy Stone & Henry Brown Blackwell)

Fannie Farmer 1857-1915 Unitarian (and Universalist?)

(cookbook author, teacher of cooking and dietetics; first to write recipes with exact measurements)

Ida C. Hultin 1858-1938 Unitarian and Universalist

(minister; spoke at 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions)

Caroline Julia Bartlett Crane 1858-1935 Unitarian

(minister, social reformer, sanitation reformer)

Carrie Clinton Lane Chapman Catt 1859-1947 Unitarian connections

(suffragist, pacifist, founder of League of Women Voters)

Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman 1860-1935 Unitarian

(feminist, author of Herland, The Yellow Wallpaper speaker)

Jane Addams 1860-1935 Presbyterian

(social reformer, settlement house founder; author, Twenty Years at Hull House) (attended All Souls' Unitarian Church in Chicago and the Ethical Culture Society in Chicago for many years; was briefly an Interim Lecturer at the Ethical Society; retained her membership in a Presbyterian congregation)

Florence Buck 1860-1925 Unitarian

(minister, religious educator, writer)

Kate Cooper Austin1864-1902 Universalist, freethinker

(feminist, anarchist, writer)

Alice Ames Winter 1865-1944 Unitarian

(Woman's Club leader, author; daugher of Fanny Baker Ames)

Beatrix Potter 1866-1943 Unitarian (British)

(artist, author; wrote Peter Rabbit series)

Emily Greene Balch 1867-1920 Unitarian, Quaker

(1946 Nobel Prize for Peace; economist, pacifist, a founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom)

Katherine Philips Edson 1870-1933 Unitarian

(suffragist, reformer, labor arbitrator)

(Sara) Josephine Baker 1873-1945 Unitarian

(health reformer, physician, public health administrator)

Amy Lowell 1874-1925 Unitarian

(poet)

Edna Madison McDonald Bonser 1875-1949 Universalist

(minister, religious educator; first woman minister in Illinois)

Clara Cook Helvie 1876-1969

(minister)

Sophia Lyon Fahs 1876-1978 Unitarian Universalist

(religious educator, minister)

Ida Maud Cannon 1877-1960 Unitarian

(social worker; known as founder of medical social work)

Margaret Sanger 1883-1966

(birth control advocate, social reformer)

Marjorie M. Brown 1884-1987 Unitarian

(author, Lady in Boomtown)

Maja V. Capek 1888-1966 Unitarian (Czechoslovakian)

(Unitarian minister; helped create the Flower Communion and introduce it to Unitarians in America and Europe)

Margaret Barr 1897? - 1973 Unitarian (British)

(educator, administrator, helped create Unitarian church movement in Khasi Hills, India; friend of Gandhi)

May Sarton 1912-1995 Unitarian Universalist

(poet, author)

Sylvia Plath

( poet)

Malvina Reynolds

(songwriter, folksinger)

Frances Moore Lappe'

(author, nutritionist, activist: wrote Diet for a Small Planet)

Jewel Graham Unitarian Universalist

(social welfare educator; President, World YWCA)

Text copyright 1999-2006 © Jone Johnson Lewis.