Alonzo Ames Miner (August 17, 1814 – June 14, 1895) was a Universalist minister. He was the second president of

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

Origins

Born in Lempster, New Hampshire, he was the second of five children and only son of Benajah Ames and Amanda (Carey) Miner. His father was a descendant of the colonist

Thomas Miner Thomas Minor (23 April 1608 – 23 October 1690) was a founder of New London and Stonington, Connecticut, United States, and an early colonial New England diarist. Early life and marriage Minor was born in Chew Magna, in Somerset, England, on A ...

. He married Maria S. Perley in August 1836.

Career

He taught school in rural

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

and

New Hampshire New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the nor ...

before being ordained a Universalist minister in 1839. He served as pastor to churches in Methuen, Lowell, and

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, Massachusetts. Miner supported many moral and civic causes, at various times being on the Board of Trustees at Tufts, the Board of Overseers at Harvard (appointed 1863), the

Massachusetts Board of Education The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) is the state education agency responsible for interpreting and implementing laws relevant to public education in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Public education in the Commonw ...

(from 1869, serving 24 years), the Board of Visitors to the Massachusetts normal school. For 21 years, he was president of the Massachusetts State Temperance Alliance, and he was the Prohibition candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 1878. One of the founders of Tufts, he rescued the college from near bankruptcy and instituted many new educational programs as president from 1862 to 1875. Alonzo Ames Miner died at his home in Boston on June 14, 1895.

References

*
Alonzo Ames Miner, 1862
– Tufts Interactive Timeline

Footnotes

External links

Records
pertaining to marriages and funerals performed and/or attended by Alonzo Ames Miner are in the Harvard Divinity School Library at

Harvard Divinity School Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, gov ...

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...

. 1814 births 1895 deaths People from Lempster, New Hampshire Members of the Universalist Church of America 19th-century Christian universalists Presidents of Tufts University Members of the Harvard Board of Overseers {{Universalism-bio-stub