Celia Parker Woolley

Background

Woolley, Celia Parker, , Ohio 1848 1918 Female Author Clergyman Unitarian Settlement Worker settlement worker, clergyman, and author, was born at Toledo, Ohio, the daughter of Marcellus Harris and Harriet Maria (Sage) Parker.

Education

The family moved to Coldwater, Mich. , and Celia spent her girlhood there, graduating from its "female" seminary.

Career

She had already begun to write, and for some years her intellectual life expressed itself chiefly through poems, hymns, and stories.

Instead of ostracism, this altruistic expression brought forth sympathy and respect as well as gratifying cooperation from many quarters.

Her books include Love and Theology (1887), A Girl Graduate (1889), Roger Hunt (1892), and The Western Slope (1903).

In 1884 she became a member of the editorial staff of Unity, a religious weekly of Chicago, edited by Jenkin Lloyd Jones [q. v. ], maintaining connection with the magazine in one capacity or another to the end of her life.

She possessed high organizing ability and brought to her negro settlement help from many influential people of Chicago.

A friend has remarked that the negroes never thoroughly understood her, or she them, but mutual respect developed.

Under the name of the Urban League, the settlement still functions (1936).

She died at Frederick Douglass Center, survived by her husband, and was buried in Oakwoods Cemetery, Chicago.

A memorial service was held at Abraham Lincoln Center (Chicago) on Apr. 7, 1918.

[Who's Who in America, 1916-17; Unity, Apr. 18, 1918 (memorial number); Christian Register, May 2, 1918; Unitarian Yearbook, 1918-19; obituaries in Chicago Tribune, Mar. 10, and Chicago Herald, Mar. 11, 1918; information from the Rev. Dr. Rowena Morse Mann, Chicago, and Mrs. Frances B. Wheeler, Geneva, Ill. ]

Religion

She served as pastor of the Unitarian Church at Geneva from 1893 to 1896.

She then accepted the pastorate of the Independent Liberal Church in Chicago but resigned two years later to spend in lecturing and writing the time she could spare from wifely duties.

Moreover, she apparently felt that she had not yet found the vehicle of expression that would enable her to make her most effective contribution to society.

Connections

In 1876 the couple removed to Chicago, and Celia Woolley at once became interested and active in the literary and civic life of the city.

Being the child of religious liberals and concerned from early years with religion, she at length decided to study for the ministry, and at forty-six was ordained into the Unitarian fellowship (Oct. 21, 1894) in Geneva, Ill.

Accompanied by her husband, she took up residence there and, surrounded by the colored people, to whom she unselfishly gave her time and energy, lived there the remaining fourteen years of her life, earnestly trying by this sincere gesture to improve relations between the races.

She had no children.

married:

H.

On Dec. 29, 1868, she married Jefferson H. Woolley, a young dentist.