(1) Hearing my plea for some Unitarian or Universalist sports figures, A Denominational History Expert (ADHE) sent me a transcription of the inscription on the Boston Common Football monument, which stands at the entrance to the Common near Beacon and Spruce Streets — his transcription appears at the very end of this post. Anyone who knows their Unitarian history will immediately recognize the name of Francis Greenwood Peabody, who was a Unitarian minister and a theologian of the Social Gospel who wrote Jesus Christ and the Social Question — and who was also the son of Ephraim Peabody, Unitarian minister here in New Bedford from 1837-1846. According to Wikipedia, the Oneida Football Club played a very early version of football that may have had some similarity to either or both American football and soccer. Further research may show that other members of the Oneida Football Club were also Unitarians. In any case, we can claim one of the very first football players in the United States.
(2) I might have found a Unitarian who won an Olympic gold medal. Turns out that Kevin Barrett, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, was born a Unitarian. His father was Peter Barrett, who was a well-known sailor who won a gold medal for sailing in the 1968 Olympics, and who won a silver medal in the 1964 Olympics (link) — he would have won the gold in 1964, except that he hit another boat, and though no one saw him do so, he dropped out of the race anyway in an act of true sportsmanship. If Kevin Barrett was born a Unitarian, there’s a decent chance that his father Peter was also a Unitarian — but I can’t confirm that. Peter Barrett lived in Madison, Wisconsin, so perhaps some of my readers have connections with the various Madison-area Unitarian Universalist churches and can find out whether or not he was a Unitarian Universalist.
Boston Common Football Momument
[Inscription on the obverse of the monument]
ON THIS FIELD THE ONEIDA
FOOTBALL CLUB OF BOSTON
THE FIRST ORGANIZED FOOTBALL
CLUB IN THE UNTIED STATES
PLAYED AGAINST ALL COMERS
FROM 1862 TO 1865. THE ONEIDA
GOAL WAS NEVER CROSSED.
This monument is placed on Boston Common
November 1925 by the seven surviving
members of the team.
[Inscription on the reverse of the monument]
GARRETT SMITH MILLER
Founder and Captain
EDWARD LINCOLN ARNOLD
ROBERT APTHORP BOIT
EDWARD BOWDITCH
WALTER DENISON BROOKS
GEORGE DAVIS
JOHN MALCOM FORBES
JOHN POWER HALL
ROBERT MEANS LAWRENCE
JAMES D’WOLF LOVETT
FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY
WINTHROP SALTONSTALL SCUDDER
ALANSON TUCKER
LOUIS THIES
ROBERT CLIFFORD WATSON
HUNTINGTON FROTHINGHAM WOLCOTT
Wow! That’s quite a list containing the names of some of the toniest of Bostonians. No wonder they got permission to erect a monument on the hallowed ground of Boston Common!
John Malcom Forbes, the common ancestor of publishing Forbes and of John Kerry, was a Unitarian. Robert Means Lawrence, of the textile family founders of the mill town of the same name, was at a minimum the son of Unitarians. (Like many wealthy, once Unitarian families he may have returned to the Congregational fold or become Episcopalian in the late 19th Century as Unitarian heterodoxy became more scandalous among the upper classes.)
The names Brooks, Tucker, and Frothingham also figure prominently in Boston Unitarian history–what connections to the individuals on the monument are best left to genealogists.
In the end this list of gentlemen athletes is, however, more a monument to the tight and insular world of Harvard and the semi-incestuous world of that vanished breed–The Boston Brahmins.
One second thought–the monument indicates that the field of honor was defended by the Oneida Club from 1862-1865. Wasn’t that when a little dust up called the Civil War was going on? One wonders how such fine physical specimens avoided the draft to wage battle against all comers on the Commons. Why do I suspect they all hired replacements (perfectly legal at the time) and some unlucky Micks were dodging musketry and cannonade at Gettysburg or the Wilderness?
F.G. Peabody was born in 1847, which means he would have been 15 when the club was founded and 18 in 1865. I’m not quite sure what age Union soldiers were, but if the football club was made up of Peabody’s young Brahmin classmates, it’s possible that they “defended” their goal with patriotic ardor they couldn’t yet take into combat.
Thanks for the correction. If I had followed the links in the original post I would have seen both Peabody’s age and this sentence in the Wikkipedia article on the Oneida Club: “The team consisted of a group of Boston secondary school students from relatively elite public (state) schools in the area, such as Boston Latin School and the English High School of Boston.”
My appologies to the lads for supposing them to be draft dodgers and append the note “No Irishmen died for them.”