American clergyman, born in Boston on the 20th of April 1802; graduated at Harvard College in 1820, and in 1825 ordained to the first Unitarian church in Philadelphia, PA, where he remained until 1875, when he retired from the ministry. From 1845 to 1847 he edited an annual called The Diadem. He was the author of Remarks on the Four Gospels (1836); Jesus and His Biographers (1838); A History of Jesus (1850–53); Domestic Worship (1842); Julius, and Other Tales, from the German (1856); The Veil Partly Lifted and Jesus Becoming Visible (1864); besides translations of works of German theologians and poets. He received the degree of doctor of letters from Columbia College in 1887. He died in Philadelphia, on the 30th of January 1896.—His son, William Henry Furness, Jr., a portrait-painter, was born in Philadelphia, on the 21st of May 1828. After being employed as a clerk for a short time, his artistic instincts asserted themselves, his expertness being most evident in crayon-work. He went abroad and studied at Munich, Dresden and Venice. On his return to America he had his studio at Boston. Among those who sat to him were Lucretia Mott, Edith May, Charles Sumner, Dr. Furness, John W. Field, Hamilton Wilde and others. He died at Cambridge, MA, on the 4th of May 1867. See also “Evening Hymn,” “The Soul” and “She Is Not Dead, but Sleepeth.”
