The Universalists’ belief that God would not condemn any of his children to endless suffering was viewed as heresy by their more orthodox Christian neighbors in the nineteenth century.  Many people thought that Universalists, fearing no divine punishment after death, would feel free to indulge in all sorts of licentiousness.  These people apparently only understood … Continue reading The Carrot, Not the Stick

In my last post I wrote about a scrapbook at the Tioga Point Museum which, I concluded, had come from the home of church member Ida Corbin.  The clipping that called my attention to this scrapbook was about a talk given to the young people’s organization at the Athens church by “Miss Maysie Green” in … Continue reading Dr. Mary Wolcott Green

I recently learned of a scrapbook at the Tioga Point Museum in Athens that contained a newspaper article about the Athens Universalist church.  The origin of this scrapbook was a bit of a mystery; the museum has no record of who donated it.  The clippings in its almost 200 pages appear to be from local … Continue reading The Scrapbook Mystery

Many of the members and friends of the Athens Universalist church in the late 1800s lived in Litchfield township, across the Susquehanna river from Athens.  The Wolcott family was the most numerous, and most of the Universalist Wolcotts were descended from Elijah Wolcott and his wife Elizabeth Park. Elizabeth Park Wolcott was born in 1788 … Continue reading They Took Their Marbles and Went Home

The Athens Universalist Society was organized in 1849 and built a meeting house on North St. in 1851. By the mid-1890’s, the building needed a lot of repairs. In November, 1895, the congregation met to discuss the possibility of selling the 1851 meeting house and building a new one about half a mile away at … Continue reading The 1896 “Poverty Party” – Part 2

Where Do We Come From? Three Stories from the Histories of the Athens and Sheshequin Universalist Congregations A sermon presented by Katie Replogle at UUCAS on Sun., Sep. 2, 2018 Where do we come from? Here in Athens and Sheshequin, we come from a long line of Universalists, among them the earliest white settlers of … Continue reading Where Do We Come From? Sermon at UUCAS Sep. 2 2018

This is the sixth of six blog posts about Universalist ministers who are buried in Bradford County. James Dean Herrick (1875-1945) James D. Herrick was born in 1875 in Cicero, N. Y. (near Syracuse). His parents owned a hotel in Cicero, which his mother continued to operate after James’ father died in 1878. There was … Continue reading Universalist Ministers’ Graves Part 6: James Dean Herrick

This is the fifth of six blog posts about Universalist ministers who are buried in Bradford County. William Garfield Cortright (1870-1915) William Garfield Cortright, the oldest of the seven children of Philip and Lucy Cortright, was born in 1870 near Wyalusing. William attended public schools but did not graduate from high school. In his early … Continue reading Universalist Ministers’ Graves Part 5: William Garfield Cortright

This is the fourth of six blog posts about Universalist ministers who are buried in Bradford County. Alice Kinney Tripp Wright Graves (1870-1949) Alice Kinney Tripp was a fifth-generation Universalist. She was a great-great-granddaughter of one of Noah Murray’s early converts, Joseph Kinney. Her parents were Estella Kinney and Dennison W. Tripp, a Civil War … Continue reading Universalist Ministers’ Graves Part 4: Alice Kinney Tripp Wright Graves