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Digital Collections

bMS 74

Ames, Charles Gordon. Letters to Clara Bancroft Beatley, 1891-1910

Biographical Information:

Charles Gordon Ames, D.D. (1828-1912) was born in Boston and was well known in the New England Transcendentalist movement. Licensed to preach in the Freewill Baptist denomination, he attended Geauga Seminary near Cleveland, Ohio from 1847-1849 and was ordained in the Freewill Baptist movement in 1849. In 1851 he founded the First Freewill Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He returned to Boston in 1859 and became a member of the Unitarian Church of the Disciples. Following the Civil War, he served as a missionary in California from 1865-1872. Reverend Ames served Unitarian parishes in Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California and Massachusetts and served as pastor and pastor-emeritus of the Church of the Disciples (Boston) from 1888 until his death. In 1880 he wrote the widely used covenant known as the Ames Covenant, which states: "In the love of truth, and in the spirit of Jesus, we unite for the worship of God and the service of all." His published works include George Eliot's Two Marriages (1885), As Natural as Life (1894), Sermons of Sunrise (1901), Poems (1898), Five Points of Faith (1903) and Living Largely (1904).

Container List:

bMS 74/1 (1): Letters, 1891.
bMS 74/1 (2): Letters, 1893.
bMS 74/1 (3): Letters, 1894.
bMS 74/1 (4): Letters, 1895.
bMS 74/1 (5): Letters, 1896.
bMS 74/1 (6): Letters, 1897.
bMS 74/1 (7): Letters, 1898.
bMS 74/1 (8): Letters, 1899.
bMS 74/1 (9): Letters, 1900.
bMS 74/1 (10): Letters, 1901. Includes MS of his address, "A Century's Retrospect," delivered to the National Conference of Unitarian and other Christian Churches, September 4, 1901.
bMS 74/1 (11): Letters, 1902.
bMS 74/1 (12): Letters, 1903.
bMS 74/1 (13): Letters, 1904.
bMS 74/1 (14): Letters, 1905.
bMS 74/1 (15): Letters, 1906. Includes MS of his speech to the Unitarian Festival, May 25, 1906.
bMS 74/1 (16): Letters, 1907.
bMS 74/1 (17): Letters, 1908.
bMS 74/1 (18): Letters, 1910.
bMS 74/1 (19): Letters, undated.