American clergyman, born at New York, on the 16th of December 1824. When he was preparing to enter Harvard College his father, a Universalist minister, died, leaving the family in straitened circumstances. Thomas obtained employment as a clerk and afterwards as a teacher, and after some theological study began to preach in September 1845, in Woburn, MA. In 1846 he was settled as pastor over his father’s former parish in Charlestown, MA, but in 1848 he was called to the Hollis Street Unitarian Church, Boston and remained with it until the spring of 1860 when he removed to San Francisco. He had already been widely noted as an eloquent lecturer, but the secession movement roused him to yet greater efforts and success. His speeches in every part of California taught the people the value of the Union and the danger of lukewarmness at that crisis. Not less able and effective were his labors in behalf of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, which thus obtained the means to carry on its noble work. He published but one book, The White Hills, their Legends, Landscapes, and Poetry (1859). After his death some of his writings were gathered into a volume, Patriotism and other Papers (1864). He died at San Francisco, on the 4th of March 1864. See also “The Business and Glory of Eternity”; Literary Criticism.
