Women’s History

Introduction to Women’s Resources

The Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society (UUHW) and the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society (UUHS) joined to form the Unitarian Universalist History and Heritage Society (UUHHS) in July 2011. This Women’s Resources section of the UUHHS website is developed from the previous UUWHS website and holds UUWHS publications. Following are notations that describe the various parts of this section.

FIND HER

is an overview of over 800 women who were included in UUWHS publications, presentations and worship services. Following are notes regarding the respective parts of the chart.

Name (Last and First: and everything in between!): When there are several names, including various maiden and married names, the most comprehensive listing is given here, although parts of the names may be omitted in other listings.

Dates: Birth and death dates are given when they are known. When dates are not specifically known, < indicates “before” the date given, and > indicates “after” the date given. Sometimes events of a woman’s life are known, such as ordination, but the dates of birth or death are not known. While most of the women included are deceased, lv. = indicates that the woman was living as of 2003 when Find-Her was compiled. These usually are authors of works published by the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society, and some have since died.

Unitarian (Unit), Universalist (Univ), or Unitarian Universalist (UU), or both Unitarian and Universalist pre-1961 (U/U): Establishing concrete connection to Unitarian or Universalist backgrounds is sometimes difficult. Women are known to have been close relationship with Unitarians or Universalists, but a concrete connection has not been established, are identified by “connections (con)”,

Geographic Information:Usually country, state and some key cities are noted. This information is included primarily for research purposes.

Contributions: There has been no attempt to develop standard wording or meaning of the contributions or focuses of a woman’s activities. For example, a ‘writer’ could be a novelist, journalist, poet, or essayist. These variations may or may not be noted. Likewise, ‘reformer’ could cover many causes and women were involved in more than one social movement.

Connections: This shows how some of the women are connected, d. = daughter; d. of = daughter of; f. = friend; gd of = granddaughter of; h. = husband (some are included, not all); n. = niece; p. = partner; s. = sister or sibling; u. = uncle. If there is no relational indicator, the woman listed is connected in some other way, such as a colleague working on similar issues.

Calendar: The UUWHS had calendars from 1996 – 2005. In 2008, the material from the calendars was compiled into the book, Unitarian Universalist Women: Liberating History. (See UU PUBLICATIONS: BOOK ORDER.)

Web Bios: Biographic information on women is available on several sites. The two sites that are noted here are: Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography, Unitarian Universalist Historical Society http://www.uua.org/uuhs/ Famous: Famous UUs http://famousuus.com (discontinued website). This comparison was done in 2003, and undoubtedly more connections could be made today.

NOTABLE WOMEN is the electronic version of the UUWHS publication by the same name, Seventh Edition, 2000. It contains over HOW MANY?brief biographic notations.

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION CONTRIBUTIONS denotes specific contributions that women have made to Religious Education, or instances in which they are included in existing curricula or Religious Education resources. For more information on the items listed in that section, contact Helen Zidowecki, hzmre@nullhzmre.com or the Catalog of Religious Education Resources at http://hzmre.com/catalog/

UUWHS Library provides a sampling of the holdings in the UUWHS Library that was compiled over a number of years with contributions from many people. Recognition for the transfer of the UUWHS Library to Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS), Andover, MA, was given at the opening of the Unitarian Universalist History and Heritage Society Lecture on May 3, 2012. The collection includes the 1000 volumes in the library and miscellaneous files of several hundred women, as well as copies of UUWHS publications. The listing presented here was compiled in 2003; it is not the final inventory that went to ANTS. For further information on specific items, contact:

Andover Newton Theological School,
210 Herrick Road Newton Centre,
MA 02459 (USA)
617-964-1100

UUWHS Publications of the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Heritage Society include Worship Services and Occasional Papers and other writings that have been scanned for the website, as well as items presented exclusively on the website. Following are several ways of addressing the publications.

FULL-TEXT ITEMS: writings that are on the site, organized by the women.

UUWHS PUBLICATIONS LIST: an alphabetical catalog or of publications by UUWHS.

CROSS-REFERENCE INDEX: lists women that appear in other UUWHS publications, namely books, for further research. This includes women listed in NOTABLE WOMEN section.

BOOK ORDER for Unitarian Universalist Women: Liberating History, published in 2008. This volume is the compilation of the pictures and biographic information found on the UUWHS calendars for 1996-2005.

UUWHS Women’s Timeline presents a chronology of the women in FIND HER based on year of birth. The timeline presents a visual picture of cohorts in twenty year periods.

SMALL GROUP MINISTRY is a way of introducing UU Women’s Heritage to congregations. Sessions have been used at workshops at General Assemblies. This section describes the Small Group Ministry process and includes some session plans.

*You may search the site for one or multiple terms at any time using the search bar at the top right of every page.

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