OLYMPIA UNITARIANS OF THE 19TH CENTURY
Jeff Goltz
INTRODUCTION AND SOURCES
OUUC traces its roots to 1952. As described on the OUUC website, in the fall of that year “a small band of like-minded folk founded the Unitarian Fellowship of Olympia, which went on to become the Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation.” https://www.ouuc.org/about/who-we-are/ouuc-history/ Sixty years after that meeting, Tim Ransom and Emily Ray put together a history of that founding and the church’s early years. https://www.ouuc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/OUUChistoryat60.pdf
But the history of Unitarianism in Olympia started much earlier. As reported by the Overland Press (one of early newspapers in the area) on August 18, 1862:
Rev. T. Starr King of San Francisco, on the 9th and 10th inst. lectured and delivered a sermon to the largest and most delighted audiences ever assembled in Olympia, and has the honor of being the first Unitarian clergyman to address the people in this Territory.
For over three decades, Unitarianism thrived in Olympia. It is a fascinating history. In upcoming articles to be published twice a month in The Spark, I will describe those early years of the Unitarian Church, its founders, its ministers, the first church building and its loss to fire, the second church building, and the significant role of the church in the community until 1898 when it lost its church building to foreclosure and, as one news story reported, the congregation “scattered.” The topics will include:
· Part I – Rev. John Kimball, Minister
· Part II – Founders of the Olympia Unitarian Society, 1872
· Part III – Rev. David Utter, Minister
· Part IV – The Olympia Unitarian Society’s First Church Building
· Part V – Rev. Napolean Hoagland, Minister
· Part VI – The Construction of Olympia’s Second Unitarian Church Building
· Part VII – Others in the Pulpit
· Part VIII – Sunday School
· Part IX – The Role of the Olympia Unitarian Church in the Community
· Part X – Hard Times and the “Scattering” of the Congregation
It was a different time, and it was a church very different than our current church. But there were a number of similarities as well.
My sources include annual yearbooks of Unitarian Congregational Churches from the American Unitarian Association, available on-line through the Harvard Divinity School (and fun reading) (https://guides.library.harvard.edu/c.php?g=253864&p=7224766);
a number of newspapers in the South Sound from the late 19th century, available from the Washington State Archives digitally (searchable and also very fun reading) (https://washingtondigitalnewspapers.org); articles from the predecessor of The Daily Olympian available from the Washington State Library; a colorful local history, Rogues, Buffoons and Statesmen, and a number of articles from the Olympia Historical Society, many written by OUUC’s Deb Ross (for example, https://olympiahistory.org/site-of-unitarian-church/).
PART I: REV. JOHN KIMBALL, MINISTER
Though Unitarianism was introduced to the South Sound by Rev. T. Starr King in 1862, It was not until 1871 when Olympia Unitarians welcomed its first minister, albeit not a permanent, “called” minister. In June 1871, the Weekly Pacific Tribune reported:
“Rev. John C. Kimball, accompanied by his wife, is expected to arrive in Olympia this evening. Mr. Kimball comes to Washington Territory as the representative of the New England Unitarian Missionary Association, and will probably spend the summer with us. He will preach in this city for the first time on Sunday next at Good Templar’s Hall. That all may have an opportunity of attending, the hour of the service has been fixed at 2 o’clock P.M., and we bespeak for the rev. gentleman a general attendance. Several of our citizens have had the pleasure of listening to Mr. K. in Portland and elsewhere, and represent him as an able and attractive speaker.”
Kimball graduated from Amherst College in 1854 and the Harvard Divinity School in 1859. He became the Unitarian minister at the First Parish in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1860, taking a leave of absence from October 1862 to August 1863 to serve in the Civil War as a chaplain, during which time he befriended Samuel Clemens.
In 1871, he left Beverly to become superintendent of the Unitarian Association in Washington Territory. And that brought him to Olympia for the summer of 1871 and to other places in the Northwest. His early sermons included “The Unitarian Idea of Christ,” “The Unitarian Idea of Man,” “Man’s Relation to God,” “The Unitarian Idea of Salvation, and “How Jesus in the Unitarian View is Savior.” He gave his farewell sermon in May 1872.
Later, Kimball became minister at the Unitarian church in Hartford Connecticut, but continued to stay in touch with the Olympia congregation, donating money to the church and sending in a message for the dedication of a new church building in 1892.
He authored several books, including a memoir from his Civil War years and “The Ethical Aspects of Evolution,” that was published by the American Unitarian Association.
He died in 1910, his obituary in the Unitarian Yearbook stating:
“Mr. Kimball was a zealous and faithful minister, a vigorous exponent of liberal theology, an untiring pleader for social rights and justice. His aversion to Calvinism was probably the occasion of his officially suppressing all but the initial C from his middle name, Calvin. . . . His great love of nature developed the study of scientific literature; the new philosophy of evolution deeply interested him; and in its relation to religious beliefs took a somewhat conspicuous place in his teachings. . . . He was an enemy to war and imperialism, and awake to the danger of sodden materialism.”
Though the Unitarian yearbooks never listed Kimball as a minister in Olympia (he was listed as minister in Portland), he was the first substantial Unitarian ministerial presence here and was referred to in later years as the “pioneer minister” in Olympia.
PART II: THE FOUNDERS OF THE OLYMPIA UNITARIAN SOCIETY, 1872
On April 13, 1872, the Washington Standard reported the formation of the Olympia Unitarian Society, stating, “[t]he Unitarian movement which has been in progress here this past winter, under the preaching of Rev. Mr. Kimball, was consummated yesterday . . . .” The article continued: “An organization of the friends of this creed was effected last Sunday, and the following officers elected: E. L. Smith, Moderator; W.B. Daniels, Clerk; Hazard Stevens, Treasurer; J.W. Waughup, A.J. Dobbins, N.S. Porter and G.N. Shattuck, to constitute with the others, a Board of Trustees.” It was the first Unitarian Society in Washington Territory.
Though it is bit of challenge to find out much about this group, there is one name that stands out: Hazard Stevens was the son of Isaac Stevens, the first Governor of Washington Territory from 1853 to 1857. As a child, Hazard Stevens was one of the witnesses of the controversial signing of the Medicine Creek Treaty that established treaty rights with several Puget Sound-area tribes and certified the signatures of the tribal representatives. He was a brigadier general in the Civil War and returned to Olympia after the war, where he reportedly was, in 1870, in the first documented climbing party to summit Mt. Rainier. Hazard drafted the Society’s articles of incorporation during that period.
As witness to the signing of some of the treaties, Hazard was once called upon to testify about the meaning of those treaties. At a trial of two members of the Nisqually Tribe arrested for killing a deer out of season, Hazard Stevens testified: “I don’t think the whites, now that the Indians are rapidly dwindling and unable to put up a fight, should back up on the agreement made more than 60 years ago. It is a matter of right and wrong. The treaty is specific in giving the Indians the right to hunt and fish wherever they want to.” This no doubt was an early precursor to the fishing rights litigation of a century later when, I suspect, local Unitarians also sided with the preservation of treaty rights. Hazard Stevens spent most of his adult life in the east, but he returned as an older man to Olympia where he established Cloverfields, an ultra-modern farm located at the current site of Olympia High School. He also was one of the founders of the first power company in Olympia.
The other founders read as a “Who’s Who” of early Olympia J. W. Waughop was an early Olympia physician and later superintendent at the state hospital in Steilacoom and President of the Washington State Medical Society in 1893. N. S. Porter (Nathan) was an attorney and initial treasurer of the Washington Bar Association and a judge.
The press understood that residents might be curious about the new denomination in the South Sound, and it seemed to want to reassure its readers that the Unitarians were not too far out of the mainstream. (The publisher of the Washington Standard, John Miller Murphy, was a member of the church.) The Washington Standard article elaborated on the formation of the Society, noting that its “basis and objects . . . certainly are both liberal and Christian:
ARTICLE II. The only basis and platform of this society shall be the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
ARTICLE III. The objects of this society shall be to promote among ourselves and in the world the principles and practices and practice of the Christian religion.”
(The other articles in this summary of the Unitarian faith were not quoted in the article.)
The Washington Standard article reported:
The new society begins under favorable auspices; upwards of thirty persons having already signed the constitution, while many others have assured it of their help and sympathy. It takes its place among the other religious organizations of Olympia, not as an antagonist and rival, but as a friendly co-worker for the same great cause, and to afford a spiritual home to that large number of persons whose hearts are with the liberal and untrammeled side of religion.
So, the Unitarian church was off to a good, and very Christian, but liberal Christian, start.
Next, on October 22, Part III: Rev. David Utter, Minister.
