Frothingham, Octavius Brooks

Frothingham, Octavius Brooks

(1822–95) religious leader, author; born in Boston, Mass. He graduated from Harvard in 1843, studied divinity there and was pastor of North Church, Salem, Mass., for eight years before leaving in a dispute over his antislavery activities. In 1859 he became pastor of the Third Congregational Unitarian Society in New York City. A theological liberal, he founded the Boston Free Religious Association in 1867 and headed it for 11 years. He published a biography of Theodore Parker, a study of New England transcendentalism, and a summary of his own religious thought, The Religion of Humanity (1876). He retired from the ministry in 1879 and was in poor health for the rest of his life.

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