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Charles Spear
Charles Spear (May 1, 1803 – April 13, 1863) was a Universalist minister who advocated for the abolishment of the death penalty, supported prison reform, and founded the newspaper ''Prisoner's Friend''. The ''Prisoner's Friend'' was advertised as "the only journal known in the world that is wholly devoted to the abolition of capital punishment and the reformation of the criminal." Charles was born in Boston on May 1, 1803, and was a member of the Universalist Church of America. Charles Spear was the younger brother of John Murray Spear. Charles studied for the Universalist ministry in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Later in life he began to criticize the death penalty. In 1830 he fought against the death penalty, the harsh treatment of prisoners, the conditions of jails, and struggled for a change from the prevailing philosophy of vindication to rehabilitation. Through Spear's efforts, prison conditions improved significantly, the death penalty was abolished in three states and impos ...
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1846 PrisonersFriend Cornhill Boston
Events January–March * January 5 – The United States House of Representatives votes to stop sharing the Oregon Country with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom. * January 13 – The Milan–Venice railway's bridge, over the Venetian Lagoon between Mestre and Venice in Italy, opens, the world's longest since 1151. * February 4 – Many Mormons begin their migration west from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Great Salt Lake, led by Brigham Young. * February 10 – First Anglo-Sikh War: Battle of Sobraon – British forces defeat the Sikhs. * February 18 – The Galician slaughter, a peasant revolt, begins. * February 19 – United States president James K. Polk's Texas annexation, annexation of the Republic of Texas is finalized by Texas president Anson Jones in a formal ceremony of transfer of sovereignty. The newly formed Texas state government is officially installed in Austin, Texas, Austin. * February 20–February 29, 29 – Kraków uprising: G ...
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Death Penalty
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that the person is responsible for violating norms that warrant said punishment. The sentence ordering that an offender is to be punished in such a manner is known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is ''condemned'' and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Crimes that are punishable by death are known as ''capital crimes'', ''capital offences'', or ''capital felonies'', and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against the person, such as murder, mass murder, aggravated cases of rape (often including child sexual abuse), terrorism, aircraft hijacking, war crimes, crimes against ...
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Universalist Church Of America
The Universalist Church of America (UCA) was originally a Christian Universalist religious denomination in the United States (plus affiliated churches in other parts of the world). Known from 1866 as the Universalist General Convention, the name was changed to the Universalist Church of America in 1942. In 1961, it consolidated with the American Unitarian Association to form the Unitarian Universalist Association. The defining theology of Universalism is '' universal salvation''; Universalists believe that the God of love would not create a person knowing that person would be destined for eternal damnation. They concluded that all people must be destined for salvation. Some early Universalists, known as Restorationists and led by Paul Dean, believed that after death there is a period of reprobation in Hell preceding salvation. Other Universalists, notably Hosea Ballou, denied the existence of Hell entirely. History Spiritual ancestry Members of the Universalist Church of A ...
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John Murray Spear
John Murray Spear (September 16, 1804 – October 5, 1887) was an American Spiritualist minister who was most known for his attempts to construct an electrically powered Messiah which he referred to as the "New Motive Power". Early life Spear was born in the city of Boston in 1804 and was from a young age a member of the Universalist Church of America. The pastor of this church was Hosea Ballou, under whom Spear and his brother, Charles, studied theology. In 1830, Spear was ordained and became minister of the Barnstable congregation. He later became a close colleague of Theodore Parker and William Lloyd Garrison.''The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear: Agitator for the Spirit Land'', by John Benedict Buescher, University of Notre Dame Press, 2006, In the 1840s, Spear was active in petitioning for social reform including women's rights, labor reform, and the removal of the death penalty. Also a prominent abolitionist, Spear organized the first Universalist antislavery conv ...
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Dedham Public Schools
The Dedham Public School System (Dedham Public Schools) is a PK– 12 graded school district in Dedham, Massachusetts. It is the oldest public school system in the United States. History On January 2, 1643, the Town Meeting set aside land for three public purposes: a school, a church, and a training field. Two years later, on January 1, 1645, by unanimous vote, the Town of Dedham authorized the first taxpayer-funded public school in the United States, "the seed of American education." It is believed the success of Dedham's school helped convince the Great and General Court to enact a law mandating schools in every community. Dedham's delegates to that body also served on the local School Committee. The early residents of Dedham were so committed to education that they donated £4.6.6 to Harvard College during its first eight years of existence, a sum greater than many other towns, including Cambridge itself. By the later part of the 17th century, however, a sentiment of anti- ...
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Dedham Historical Society
The Dedham Museum and Archive (formerly known as the Dedham Historical Society and Museum and the Dedham Historical Society), is an historical society dedicated to preserve and establish a greater sense of appreciation for the history of Dedham, Massachusetts. It consists of a museum and an archive. , it had nearly 1,000 members. History As early as 1853, Henry Orin Hildreth was calling for the creation of a historical society dedicated to the history of Dedham. On February 1, 1859, Hildreth, along with Calvin Guild, Danforth Phipps Wight, Jonathan Holmes Cobb, Francis Marsh, and William Bulliard met in the office of the Dedham Institution for Savings to form an organization dedicated to "preserving and transmitting to posterity all possible memorials of past and present times." At the first meeting Wight was chosen chairman and Guild secretary. A committee was then appointed consisting of Bullard, Hildreth, and Guild to draft the Constitution and by laws. These were adopted ...
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Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, government, and service. It also caters to students from other Harvard schools that are interested in the former field. HDS is among a small group of university-based, non-denominational divinity schools in the United States (others include University of Chicago Divinity School, Yale Divinity School, Vanderbilt University Divinity School, and Wake Forest University School of Divinity). History Harvard College was founded in 1636 as a Puritan/ Congregationalist institution and trained ministers for many years. The separate institution of the Divinity School dates from 1816, when it was established as the first non-denominational divinity school in the United States. ( Princeton Theological Seminary had been founded as a Presbyterian i ...
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Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, Massachusetts, Boston, Worcester, Massachusetts, Worcester, and Springfield, Massachusetts, Springfield. It is one of two de jure county seats of Middlesex County, although the county's executive government was abolished in 1997. Situated directly north of Boston, across the Charles River, it was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, once also an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Lesley University, and Hult International Business School are in Cambridge, as was Radcliffe College before it merged with Harvard. Kendall Square in Cambridge has been called "the most innovati ...
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Clergy From Boston
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the terms used for individual clergy are clergyman, clergywoman, clergyperson, churchman, and cleric, while clerk in holy orders has a long history but is rarely used. In Christianity, the specific names and roles of the clergy vary by denomination and there is a wide range of formal and informal clergy positions, including deacons, elders, priests, bishops, preachers, pastors, presbyters, ministers, and the pope. In Islam, a religious leader is often known formally or informally as an imam, caliph, qadi, mufti, mullah, muezzin, or ayatollah. In the Jewish tradition, a religious leader is often a rabbi (teacher) or hazzan (cantor). Etymology The word ''cleric'' comes from the ecclesiastical Latin ''Clericus'', for those belonging to ...
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1803 Births
Eighteen or 18 may refer to: * 18 (number), the natural number following 17 and preceding 19 * one of the years 18 BC, AD 18, 1918, 2018 Film, television and entertainment * ''18'' (film), a 1993 Taiwanese experimental film based on the short story ''God's Dice'' * ''Eighteen'' (film), a 2005 Canadian dramatic feature film * 18 (British Board of Film Classification), a film rating in the United Kingdom, also used in Ireland by the Irish Film Classification Office * 18 (''Dragon Ball''), a character in the ''Dragon Ball'' franchise * "Eighteen", a 2006 episode of the animated television series '' 12 oz. Mouse'' Music Albums * ''18'' (Moby album), 2002 * ''18'' (Nana Kitade album), 2005 * '' 18...'', 2009 debut album by G.E.M. Songs * "18" (5 Seconds of Summer song), from their 2014 eponymous debut album * "18" (One Direction song), from their 2014 studio album ''Four'' * "18", by Anarbor from their 2013 studio album ''Burnout'' * "I'm Eighteen", by Alice Cooper comm ...
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1863 Deaths
Events January–March * January 1 – Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation during the third year of the American Civil War, making the abolition of slavery in the Confederate states an official war goal. It proclaims the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's four million slaves and immediately frees 50,000 of them, with the rest freed as Union armies advance. * January 2 – Lucius Tar Painting Master Company (''Teerfarbenfabrik Meirter Lucius''), predecessor of Hoechst, as a worldwide chemical manufacturing brand, founded in a suburb of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. * January 4 – The New Apostolic Church, a Christian and chiliastic church, is established in Hamburg, Germany. * January 7 – In the Swiss canton of Ticino, the village of Bedretto is partly destroyed and 29 killed, by an avalanche. * January 8 ** The Yorkshire County Cricket Club is founded at the Adelphi Hotel, in Sheffield, England. ** American Civil War &nd ...
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American Religious Leaders
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * ...
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