William Mountford

William Mountford (31 May 1816 – 20 April 1885) was an English Unitarian preacher and author whose life moved between the dissenting chapels of England and the Unitarian circles of New England. Born in Kidderminster, England, he grew up in a setting marked by loss, study, and religious seriousness. After his mother’s death, he was adopted by her sister, Miss Follows, a great reader who tried to teach the children of the poor. Mountford later spoke of her with affectionate respect.

As a child he was delicate, and a limp remained one of his physical peculiarities after early weakness. He was once nearly drowned in the River Stour and was pulled from the water senseless. At Pearsall’s Grammar School, his intelligence and quiet, studious habits won the esteem of the schoolmaster, the Rev. Evan Jones, who left him his library. The Rev. J. Kentish of Birmingham encouraged him to prepare for York College, and while studying in Birmingham Mountford boarded with Mr. and Mrs. T. H. Carpenter. He later wrote that one of them had much to do with his “tone of thinking and independence.”

Mountford’s religious and intellectual formation came through English Presbyterian training, careful scholarship, and teachers who valued freedom of thought. He expressed gratitude for tutors such as Mr. Wellbeloved, saying that even if Wellbeloved did not show his students “all truth,” he gave them “honesty and freedom of thought.” At York, Mountford came under the influence of James Martineau and renounced the philosophy of Hartley and Mill. Though short in stature and boyish in appearance, he surprised a small congregation supplied by students with the force and fervor of his preaching.

Within a month after leaving college, on 8 July 1838, Mountford began his ministry at Strangeways Chapel, Manchester, which had opened on 17 June. The situation was troubled by dispute, and the young minister felt unwelcome, though he worked with great energy. His doctrinal lectures could last nearly an hour and a half, and his labor as both preacher and student strained his health. After about three years he resigned. A later ministry at Hinckley was followed by work at Lynn, Norfolk, where his salary was small and he lived chiefly on brown bread and milk so that he could buy books.

Mountford had long wished to visit the United States, and in 1849 Dr. Huntington obtained a free passage for him. He reached Boston early in 1850 and soon preached in Huntington’s church. He also preached for a time at the Unitarian church in Washington, D.C., where President Millard Fillmore had a seat and Daniel Webster and Edward Everett were occasional attendants. In 1851 he preached at Nahant, where Miss E. Crowninshield heard him; they married in March 1853. At her wish, he resigned his pastoral charge, though he continued to preach occasionally.

His books include Christianity: the Deliverance of the Soul and its Life and Martyria: a Legend, both published in 1846; Euthanasy, or Happy Talks toward the End of Life (1850); Beauties of Channing (1852); Thorpe: a Quiet English Town and Life Therein (1852), based on Hinckley, Leicestershire; and Miracles Past and Present (1870). His later years included travel in Europe, stays in Rome, and writing on the supernatural and “The Miraculous.” He ultimately retired to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and died in Boston on 20 April 1885. His words still carry warmth because they came from a life of study, strain, independence, and religious searching.