1912 – Robert Collyer, an English mill worker turned Unitarian minister, died at 89 in New York City. As a child, he worked from six in the morning until eight at night every day. Collyer came to Philadelphia in 1850 and worked as a blacksmith. Inspired by Lucretia Mott, he became an abolitionist and switched from the Methodist to the Unitarian church in 1859. He began to preach and took a church in Chicago. In 1879 he became the minister of the Church of the Messiah in New York City, which John Haynes Holmes renamed Community Church. Read more about Robert Collyer at: www.HarvardSquareLibrary.org – the digital library of Unitarian Universalism.

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