Henry Ware Jr. was an influential Unitarian theologian, early member of the faculty of Harvard Divinity School, and first president of the Harvard Musical Association.
Background
Henry Ware, the son of Henry and Mary (Clark) Ware and brother of John and William Ware, was born on April 21, 1794 in Hingham, Massachussets, where his father was pastor, and lived there until 1805, when the elder Henry became professor of divinity at Harvard.
Education
He received his early education in the schools of his native town and under tutors until 1807, in which year he was sent to Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachussets The year following he entered Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1812.
Career
From 1812 to 1814 he taught under Benjamin Abbot at Phillips Academy, Exeter, N. H. , and then returned to Harvard to complete the preparation for the ministry which he had been carrying on privately. He had written some verse and at a public gathering held in 1815 after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent he delivered a poem, subsequently published under the title A Poem Pronounced at the Celebration of Peace (1815). On January 1, 1817, he was ordained pastor of the Second Church (Unitarian), Boston. He succeeded Noah Worcester as editor of the Christian Disciple (1819 - 23), and in 1821 contributed articles, signed Artinius, to the Christian Register. In 1822 he projected Sunday evening services for those who had no stated places of worship, a missionary endeavor later carried on by the ministry-at-large. An advocate of preaching without manuscript, he published in 1824 Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching. He took a prominent part in the establishment of the American Unitarian Association, and was long a member of its executive committee. At the annual Phi Beta Kappa meeting at Harvard, August 26, 1824, made memorable by the presence of Lafayette, he delivered a poem entitled "The Vision of Liberty. " The condition of Ware's health led him to resign his pastorate in 1828, but his parishioners would not consent to a separation and the following year gave him a colleague in the person of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Meanwhile, he had been appointed first professor of pulpit eloquence and pastoral care in the Harvard Divinity School. After a seventeen-month sojourn in Europe, during which he visited Wordsworth, Southey, Maria Edgeworth, and other persons of note, he felt unable to carry on both pastoral and professorial duties and, relinquishing his parish, he moved to Cambridge. During his career at Harvard, though in the latter part of it he took over much of his father's work, he found time for considerable writing. One of his works, On the formation of the Christian Character (1831), went through some fifteen editions and was republished abroad. To provide young people with books suitable for Sunday reading, he projected "The Sunday Library, " for which he wrote the first volume, The Life of the Saviour (1833). This also had wide circulation. Other publications included sermons, addresses, reviews, and memoirs of Joseph Priestley, Nathan Parker, and Noah Worcester. After his death The Works of Henry Ware, Jr. , D. D. , edited by Chandler Robbins, appeared. Later his ardor cooled, for the impatience and intolerance of the abolitionists were repellent to one of his nature. Forced by failing strength to resign his professorship in 1842, he retired to Framingham, Massachussets, where he died in his forty-ninth year. His body was taken to Cambridge and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.
Achievements
Personality
He was a somewhat frail, serious-minded youth, religiously inclined from childhood, mingling little in the social life of the college, but taking commendable rank as a scholar.
Ware's life was comparatively short and ill health continually interfered with his activities. He was below medium height, thin, and stooping, and was careless as to his dress and personal appearance. His manner did not invite approach and few were on terms of intimacy with him. In spite of these handicaps, however, he became one of the leading ministers of New England, and his writings were widely read both in America and abroad. The whole purpose of his life was usefulness rather than high accomplishment, and into the various fields that he entered he put the full measure of his devotion.
Connections
In October 1817 he was married to Elizabeth Watson Waterhouse, daughter of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of Cambridge. In 1823, one of his three children died, and in less than a year, his wife; on June 11, 1827, he married Mary Lovell Pickard. To this marriage were born six children, one of whom was William Robert Ware.