William Ellery Channing Papers 1791-1892 Guide to the Microfilm Edition This microfilm edition was made possible by a grant from the North Shore Unitarian Veatch Foundation of Plandome, New York.

Table of Contents Collection Summary Biographical Sketch Collection Description Organization Detailed Description of the Collection Preferred Citation Access Terms Materials Removed

Collection Summary

Biographical Sketch

William Ellery Channing was a Unitarian clergyman, literary critic, author, and the leading spokesman for liberal religion of his generation.

Collection Description

This collection contains the personal correspondence, writings, and other papers of William Ellery Channing. The main body of the microfilm edition consists of the William Ellery Channing papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society, supplemented by letters and documents drawn from other MHS manuscript collections. Among the family members represented in the collection are Channing's mother Lucy Ellery Channing, his grandfather William Ellery, his wife Ruth Gibbs Channing, and his uncles Henry and Walter Channing. Other correspondents include Washington Allston, James G. Birney, John C. Calhoun, Catherine Codman, Ezra Stiles Gannett, John T. Kirkland, Horace Mann, Francis Parkman, Eloise Richards Payne, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Jonathan Phillips, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Henry Dwight Sedgwick, Samuel E. Sewall, George Ticknor, Joseph Tuckerman, and members of the Gibbs family of Newport, R.I. Among the subjects discussed in Channing's correspondence and writings are: the American Unitarian Association, the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, education, the Federal Street Church, Harvard University and the Divinity School there, aid for laboring people, the Elijah P. Lovejoy meeting at Faneuil Hall in 1837, the early peace movement, religion (including Unitarianism and religious controversies of the day), slavery and abolition, temperance, and 19th-century travel in Europe and the West Indies. Also included in this collection are sermons, lectures, and speeches; travel diaries, 1821-1830; and notes, correspondence, financial records, and other documents related to Channing's publications and the settlement of his estate.

Additional William Ellery Channing papers are drawn primarily from the Ezra Stiles Gannett papers and the Jonathan Phillips papers. Other collections represented include: the Appleton family papers, the George Bancroft papers, the Henry W. Bellows papers, the Samuel Cabot papers, the Hugh Upham Clark collection, the Caroline Wells Healey Dall papers, the Edward Everett papers, the Everett-Peabody family papers, the Guild Library, the Heath family papers, the Horace Mann collection, the Grenville H. Norcross autograph collection, the Harrison Gray Otis papers II, the Pemberton collection, the Quincy family papers, the Robie-Sewall family papers, the Sedgwick family papers, the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge papers III, the Thomas Wren Ward papers, the Alexander Calvin and Ellen Morton Washburn autograph collection, the R. C. Waterston autograph collection, and the Winthrop family papers.

All items are individually described in the MHS manuscript catalog.

Organization of the Collection

The collection is organized into the following series:

Detailed Description of the Collection

Listed below are all of the individual documents in this collection in the order in which they appear on the microfilm. All items are part of the William Ellery Channing papers unless otherwise indicated.

Preferred Citation

Microfilm edition of the William Ellery Channing papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Access Terms

This collection is indexed under the following headings in ABIGAIL, the online catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related persons, organizations, or subjects should search the catalog using these headings.

Materials Removed from the Collection

Photographs from this collection have been removed to the William Ellery Channing photographs (unprocessed). Photo. Coll. 500.85.