Dictionary of UU Biography

Dictionary entries

Visitors to the Dictionary of UU Biography  can learn about Celia Burleigh, The Peabody Sisters, Rod Serling, Nathan Appleton, Margaret Fuller, Noah Worcester, Robert Burns, Olympia Brown, Edward Turner, Lydia Maria Child, Adlai Stevenson, and Ezra Ripley, just to name a handful. Entries currently in the works include those on John Quincy Adams, Charles Dickens, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Murray, Judith Sargent Murray, Theodore Parker, Louisa May Alcott, Frank Lloyd Wright, Fannie Farmer, James Martineau, Hannah Adams, Carl Seaburg, May Sarton, and Jose Maria Blanco-White.

DUUB Goals

• short biographies of famous people who are known or thought to be Unitarians and/or Universalists;
• authoritative biographies with evidence of Unitarian and/or Universalist affiliation;
• biographies that describe the religious faiths of well known Unitarian and Universalist persons and show how these faiths were connected to their lives and accomplishments;
• biographies of Unitarian and/or Universalist laypeople and clergy who are known primarily for their contributions to our religious tradition;
• biographies of people not usually discussed in our histories including those whose contributions have been heretofore neglected;
• biographies of people both American and non-American;
• biographies of important figures in regional denominational history;
• biographies of people who have been overlooked; women, minorities, and those whose contributions have been slighted; and
• biographies contributed by many writers, each researching biographies of great interest to themselves and/or lying within their fields of established expertise.

DUUB policies

• only include dead people (making the dictionary consistent with American National Biography and other similar reference works);
• the starting date is the year 1500;
• people who properly belong entirely to another religious tradition will not to be considered, no matter how heretical their personal theology might have been;
• the entries are made especially for the dictionary, according to the committee's standards, and use original research. The editors ask writers to consult primary sources whenever possible, particularly when the question of Unitarian or Universalist identity is at issue.
• When dealing with UU heroes we will include weakness and failure along with strength and accomplishment.