William Rounseville Alger

William Rounseville Alger was born in Freetown, Massachusetts, on December 28, 1822 to Nahum and Catherine Sampson Alger, née Rounseville.^[1][2] He attended the academy at Pembroke, New Hampshire, working part-time at a cotton mill.^[1][2] Alger graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1847 and was ordained as a Unitarian minister in Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he preached until 1855.^[3]

After 1855, Alger went to the Bulfinch Street Church in Boston, and preached around the country including in New York, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Louisiana, and Rhode Island.^[3] He became well known in Boston for filling Tremont Temple.^[4]

Alger was an active abolitionist and Free Mason, and a contributor to various periodicals including the Christian Examiner, which he co-edited in the 1860s.^[3] In 1857, he gave the annual Boston Fourth of July celebration day speech, in which he addressed the issue of slavery.^[5] His remarks—which denounced the Fugitive Slave law and the Boston authorities who observed it—were controversial; and the city refused the usual publication of the speech. However, seven years later, the city government unanimously reversed their decision, publishing the speech and publicly thanking him for it.^[1]

Alger was also the first regular pastor of the first Episcopalian church in Biddeford, Maine, which was built in 1869,^[6] as well as the All Souls Unitarian Church in Roxbury (also called the Mount Pleasant Congregational Church).^[7] He also served in The Church of the Messiah, an important Unitarian church in New York.^[8] He served as Chaplain of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.^[9] Harvey Jewell, the speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives was impressed by Alger's prayers and asked for his words to be taken down by the stenographer and published.^[1]

Alger died on February 7, 1905.

Some of his notebooks are stored at the Harvard Divinity School library,^[3] and the New York Public Library.^[10] Many of his published works have gone through numerous editions,^[1] and a number of his hymns have been published in various hymnals and songbooks.^[11]

William Alger married Anne Langdon in 1847. They had seven children, including Philip Rounseville Alger, an American naval officer,^[2] and translator Abby Langdon Alger.^[12]

Alger's cousin was the noted author Horatio Alger, who had also served as a Unitarian pastor for a short time.^[7] Though he was less widely known than Horatio, Gary Scharnhorst called William the "more talented" cousin in his 1990 biography of William Alger.^[13]

• History of the cross of Christ (1851)
• The charities of Boston, or, Twenty years at the Warren-street Chapel (1856)
• The Genius and Posture of America: An Oration Delivered to the Citizens of Boston, July 4, 1857 (originally given July 4, 1857, pub. 1864)
• The historic purchase of freedom (1859)
• Lessons for mankind, from the life and death of Humbolt (1859)
• A tribute to the memory and services of the Rev. Theodore Parker (1860)
• Good Samaritan in Boston; a tribute to Moses Grant (1862)
• Public morals: or, The true glory of a state (1862)
• The solitudes of nature and of man; or, The loneliness of human life (1867)
• Prayers offered in the Massachusetts House of Representatives during the session of 1868 (1868)
• The American poets : a review of the works of Thomas William Parsons (1869)
• The end of the world, and the day of judgment : two discourses preached to the Music-Hall Society (1870)
• The sword, the pen, and the pulpit ; with a tribute to the Christian genius and memory of Charles Dickens (1870)
• The Poetry of the Orient (1874) [first pub. under The Poetry of the East; 1856]
• Life of Edwin Forrest, the American tragedian (1877)
• The Friendships of Women (1879)
• A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life (1880)
• The school of life (1881)

• Scharnhorst, Gary (1990). A Literary Biography of William Rounseville Alger (1822-1905), a Neglected Member of the Concord Circle. Lewiston: Mellen.