Abbot, Francis Ellingwood (06 November 1836–23 October 1903), Unitarian clergyman and philosopher, was born in Boston, the son of Joseph Hale Abbot and Fanny Ellingwood Larcom. The senior Abbot was a schoolmaster and amateur scientist who reflected the strict moralism of early nineteenth-century Unitarianism, while his wife displayed a strong poetical bent, and Abbot’s life and career were influenced by both. After being educated at the Boston Latin School he entered Harvard College and graduated in 1859. While there he underwent a strong religious conversion, at least partly through the influence of his college friend ...
Article
Abbot, Francis Ellingwood (1836-1903), Unitarian clergyman and philosopher
Robert Bruce Mullin
Article
Abeel, David (1804-1846), missionary
David M. Stowe
Abeel, David (12 June 1804–03 September 1846), missionary, was born at New Brunswick, New Jersey, the son of Captain David Abeel, a U.S. naval officer, and Jane Hassert. At age fifteen he applied to West Point Military Academy, but, doubtful of success in the competition for places, he withdrew and began the study of medicine. Feeling a deep sense of sin, he found faith that Christ was his savior and determined to enter the ministry....
Article
Abernathy, Ralph David (1926-1990), civil rights leader and minister
Kenneth H. Williams
Abernathy, Ralph David (11 March 1926–17 April 1990), civil rights leader and minister, was born David Abernathy in Linden, Alabama, the son of William L. Abernathy and Louivery Valentine Bell, farmers. A sister’s favorite professor was the inspiration for the nickname “Ralph David,” and although Abernathy never made a legal change, the name remained with him from age twelve....
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Abernathy, Ralph David (1926-1990)
In
Ralph Abernathy Photograph by Warren K. Leffler, 1968. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (U.S. News and World Report Collection: LC-U9-19265).
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Abraham Becker and Magdalena Becker (1901–1941)
Marvin E. Kroeker
Abraham Becker and Magdalena Becker (act. 1901–1941), Mennonite missionaries who worked among the Comanche Indians of Oklahoma
Abraham Jacob Becker (25 February 1872–15 January 1953) was born in Wohldemfuerst, Kuban, Russia, the son of Jacob P. Becker, a farmer and minister and a founder of the Mennonite Brethren branch of the Mennonite Church, and Margaretha Wiens Becker. ...
Article
Acrelius, Israel (1714-1800), Lutheran clergyman and author
Thaddeus Russell
Acrelius, Israel (04 December 1714–25 April 1800), Lutheran clergyman and author, was born in Öster-Âker, Sweden, the son of Johan Acrelius, a pastor, and Sara Gahm. At the age of twelve he entered the University of Uppsala, where he trained for the ministry and received his ordination in 1743. Acrelius then served as a domestic chaplain until 1745, when he became the pastor of Riala, Kulla, and Norra Ljusterö....
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Adams, Evangeline (8 February 1868–10 November 1932), astrologer
William E. Burns
Adams, Evangeline (8 February 1868–10 November 1932), astrologer, was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, the fifth child and first surviving daughter of George Adams and his wife Harriet Adams, born Smith. Although she would imply that she was a descendant of the presidential Adamses, her paternal ancestors came from a separate branch of the Adams family....
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Adams, Hannah (1755-1831), historian of religions and writer
Carol Berkin
Adams, Hannah (02 October 1755–15 December 1831), historian of religions and writer, was born in Medfield, Massachusetts, the daughter of Thomas Adams, Jr., a merchant of “English goods” and books, and Elizabeth Clark. She was a distant cousin of President John Adams. Adams lost her mother when she was eleven; her father remarried and had four more children with his second wife. Using the inheritance of her grandfather’s prosperous farm for capital, her father opened a store. By the time she was in her teens the business had failed and depleted the family’s resources to a level of need from which they would never recover. Although her father was never able to bring to his family any financial stability, he was able to share with his daughter an avid thirst for knowledge and his love of reading. In his youth, illness had prevented him from pursuing formal education, but, driven by personal ambition, he became extremely well read and mastered an exhaustive collection of facts....
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Adams, William (1807-1880), minister and seminary president
Gardiner H. Shattuck
Adams, William (25 January 1807–31 August 1880), minister and seminary president, was born in Colchester, Connecticut, the son of John Adams, an educator, and Elizabeth Ripley. Adams grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, where his father was the principal of Phillips Academy. He entered Yale College in 1824, where he received his A.B. in 1827. After college he returned home to study at Andover Theological Seminary and to assist his father in teaching. He completed his seminary training in 1830 and was ordained a Congregational minister. He began service as the pastor of a church in Brighton, Massachusetts, in 1831. He married Susan P. Magoun in July 1831. His wife’s illness forced him to resign from the Brighton pastorate in early 1834, but following her death in May, he accepted a ministerial call to the Broome Street (later Central) Presbyterian Church in New York City. Since the Congregational and Presbyterian denominations then enjoyed a spirit of mutual respect and cooperation, Adams switched denominations and was installed as pastor in November 1834. In August 1835 he married Martha B. Magoun, the sister of his first wife....
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Adamski, George (17 April 1891–23 April 1965), lecturer and writer on occult subjects and on UFOs during the 1950s' flying saucer enthusiasm
Robert S. Ellwood
Adamski, George (17 April 1891–23 April 1965), lecturer and writer on occult subjects and on UFOs during the 1950s' flying saucer enthusiasm, lecturer and writer on occult subjects and on UFOs during the 1950s’ flying saucer enthusiasm, was born in Poland. His parents (names unknown) brought him to the United States when he was one or two. The family settled in Dunkirk, New York; their life was hard, and Adamski received little formal education. He joined the Thirteenth U.S. Cavalry Regiment in 1913 as an enlisted man, serving on the Mexican border, and was honorably discharged in 1916. On 25 December 1917 he married Mary A. Shimbersky (d. 1954). After leaving the army, Adamski worked as a painter in Yellowstone National Park, in a flour mill in Portland, Oregon, and by 1921 was working in a cement factory in California. He continued to live in California, reportedly supporting himself and his wife through a variety of jobs, including by the 1930s teaching and lecturing on occult subjects....
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Adger, John Bailey (1810-1899), Presbyterian missionary and seminary professor
T. Erskine Clarke
Adger, John Bailey (13 December 1810–03 January 1899), Presbyterian missionary and seminary professor, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of James Adger, a merchant and banker, and Sarah Elizabeth Ellison. His father was one of Charleston’s most affluent citizens. A graduate of Union College in Schenectady, New York (1828), and of Princeton Theological Seminary (1833), Adger married Elizabeth Keith Shewsbury of Charleston in June 1834. They would have eight children. Five weeks later the couple sailed to Smyrna, Asia Minor (now Izmir, Turkey), where Adger began his work as a missionary under the sponsorship of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Adger’s primary work was among the Armenians as a translator and manager of a printing press. During the late 1830s and early 1840s he translated the New Testament, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and ...
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Adler, Cyrus (1863-1940), academic administrator and Jewish communal leader
Ira Robinson
Adler, Cyrus (13 September 1863–07 April 1940), academic administrator and Jewish communal leader, was born in Van Buren, Arkansas, to Samuel Adler, a merchant and planter, and Sarah Sulzberger. At an early age Adler’s family moved to Philadelphia and then to New York, where his father died in 1867. The family returned to Philadelphia, where his mother’s brother, David Sulzberger, became head of the household and was a great influence on Adler’s upbringing. As a boy, Adler received an intensive education in Judaic subjects from a consortium of Philadelphia rabbis, headed by ...
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Adler, Morris (1906-1966), rabbi
Andrew R. Heinze
Adler, Morris (30 March 1906–11 March 1966), rabbi, was born in Slutsk, Russia, the son of Joseph Adler, a and Jennie Resnick. Adler arrived in the United States with his mother and brother in 1913, joining his father who had settled in New York City two years earlier. A shy and bookish boy, Adler grew up on the Lower East Side, attending a Hebrew elementary school and the DeWitt Clinton High School. He studied at the Hebrew Teachers’ Institute, at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva (later Yeshiva University), and at the City College of New York, from which he graduated in 1928. In 1929 he married Goldie Kadish; the couple had one daughter. By this time Adler had developed a fascination with the idea of helping troubled people, and his wife recalled that he probably would have studied psychiatry if he had not entered the rabbinate. After brief service officiating at an Orthodox synagogue in St. Joseph, Missouri, he decided to enter the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). His father, who was the principal of an Orthodox school in Brooklyn, nevertheless supported his son’s decision to seek ordination within the Conservative branch of Judaism. Adler was ordained at the JTS in June 1935....
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Ahlstrom, Sydney Eckman (1919-1984), American religious historian
Peter W. Williams
Ahlstrom, Sydney Eckman (16 December 1919–03 July 1984), American religious historian, was born in Cokato, Minnesota, the son of Joseph T. Ahlstrom, a dentist, and Selma Eckman, a teacher. He received the B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1941. After serving as a captain in the army during World War II, he took an M.A. at the University of Minnesota in 1946 and the Ph.D. in American history at Harvard under Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in 1952. In 1953 Ahlstrom married Nancy Ethel Alexander, an editor and the daughter of an Episcopal priest; together they had four children....
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Alamo, Susan (1925-1982), independent Pentecostal minister and television and radio evangelist
Amanda Carson Banks
Alamo, Susan (25 April 1925–08 April 1982), independent Pentecostal minister and television and radio evangelist, was born Edith Opal Horn in Dyer, Arkansas, the daughter of Edward Horn and Geneva McAlster. Edith Horn converted from Judaism to evangelical Protestantism as a child. After some high school and a brief early marriage (to Tom Brown), she moved to Hollywood to try to make a career as an actress. There she met and, around 1940, married Solomon Lipowitz, with whom she had one daughter, known as Christhaon Susan. This marriage officially ended in 1966, though the couple had separated sometime before. As Susan Lipowitz she worked sporadically as an actress but mostly traveled around the country with her daughter as an evangelical minister and tent missionary. In 1965, while working as a street evangelist in Hollywood, she met Tony Alamo (born Bernie Lazar Hoffman in 1934), a talent promoter in the music business. She soon converted Alamo, who also was born Jewish, to her strand of Protestantism, and they were married in 1966, once in Tijuana and twice in Las Vegas, to be “triple sure.” It was the third marriage for both....
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Albright, Jacob (1759-1808), founder of the Evangelical Association, a denomination now constitutive of the United Methodist church
Russell E. Richey
Albright, Jacob (01 May 1759–18 May 1808), founder of the Evangelical Association, a denomination now constitutive of the United Methodist church, was born near Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in Montgomery County, the son of John Albright (German spelling Albrecht); his mother’s identity is unknown. The Albrecht family were German-speaking Lutherans, and Albright was baptized and confirmed. His schooling was rudimentary. He served in the Revolution and lost a brother to the American cause. In 1785 he married Catherine Cope. They settled in Lancaster County, where Albright established a brick and tile business, a trade that he pursued even after taking up the ministry and that earned him a reputation as the “Honest Tilemaker.”...
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Alcott, A. Bronson (1799-1888), Transcendentalist and reformer
Frederick C. Dahlstrand
Alcott, A. Bronson (29 November 1799–04 March 1888), Transcendentalist and reformer, was born Amos Bronson Alcox in Wolcott, Connecticut, the son of Joseph Chatfield Alcox and Anna Bronson, farmers. Farming the rocky Connecticut soil was not lucrative, and Alcott worked hard with his parents to help support seven younger siblings, thereby limiting his opportunities for a formal education. He attended the local district school until age ten, but thereafter his intellectual growth largely depended on his own reading and discussions with friends of a similar scholarly bent, the first being his cousin William Andrus Alcott. William later attended Yale College and established a career as a physician and popular author of health manuals, but continuing poverty prevented Bronson from obtaining a college education. At age fifteen he, like many of his young Connecticut contemporaries, began peddling small manufactured goods, first in Massachusetts and New York, then in Virginia and the Carolinas....
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Alcott, A. Bronson (1799-1888)
In
A. Bronson Alcott. At age fifty-three. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-54729).
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Alemany, Joseph Sadoc (1814-1888), first Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco
Jeffrey M. Burns
Alemany, Joseph Sadoc (13 July 1814–14 April 1888), first Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco, was born in Vich, Spain, one of twelve children of Antonio Alemany y Font, a blacksmith, and Micaela de los Santos Cunill y Saborit. Alemany entered the diocesan seminary in 1824, and six years later he entered the Dominican order. In 1835, when the secularization laws closed the religious houses in Spain as a result of the anticlerical party in power, he went to Italy to complete his studies for the priesthood. He was ordained in 1837 in Viterbo, Italy....
Article
Alexander, Archibald (1772-1851), theological scholar
James H. Moorhead
Alexander, Archibald (17 April 1772–22 October 1851), theological scholar, was born in what is today Rockbridge County, Virginia, near Lexington, the son of William Alexander and Ann Reid, farmers. Alexander’s father was also a merchant. By local standards, the Alexanders enjoyed a solid affluence....
