Brownson, Orestes

Brownson, Orestes (Augustus)

(1803–76) writer, religious thinker; born in Stockbridge, Vt. Largely self-educated and zealously devoted to social and religious reform, he was, successively, a Presbyterian, a Universalist minister, and a Unitarian pastor, before founding his own sect (1836); he was also associated with the transcendentalist movement. In 1838 he founded and became editor of the Boston (later Brownson's) Quarterly Review. In 1844, with his wife and seven children, he became a Catholic; as an apologist for Catholicism (and for American democracy) thereafter, he was, as always, militant and uncompromising; his works, which attracted controversy from both inside and outside Catholicism, were widely read in his day.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.