William Ware was an American Unitarian clergyman and writer.
Background
William Robert Ware was born in Hingham, Massachussets, the son of Henry Ware, 1764-1845, and Mary (Clark) and a brother of Henry and John Ware. When William was about eight years old, his father became Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard, and the boy was fitted for college, partly in Cambridge by his cousin, Ashur Ware, and partly under the Rev. John Allyn of Duxbury.
Education
He graduated from Harvard in 1816, and then taught school, first in Hingham and later in Cambridge, at the same time pursuing studies in theology.
Career
On December 18, 1821, he was ordained as pastor of the first Unitarian church to be established in New York City. After doing pioneer work there for nearly fifteen years, he resigned in October 1836. Ware felt, and not without reason, that he was temperamentally unfitted for the work of the ministry. In the latter part of his life, moreover, he was afflicted with epilepsy. Accordingly, after leaving New York he held but two brief pastorates - at Waltham, Massachussets (1837 - 38), and at West Cambridge (1844 - 45). His principal interests, aside from religion, were in literature and art. In March 1836 he began a series of articles in the Knickerbocker Magazine, which he published in 1837 under the title Letters of Lucius M. Piso from Palmyra, to His Friend Marcus Curtius at Rome. It portrays with considerable vividness life in the Roman Empire during the later days of Zenobia's reign, and subsequent editions were entitled Zenobia: or, The Fall of Palmyra: An Historical Romance. In 1838 he issued a sequel, Probus: or, Rome in the Third Century, published afterward under the title Aurelian: or, Rome in the Third Century. These works had deserved popularity at home and in England. Becoming proprietor of the Christian Examiner in 1839, he edited it from May of that year until January 1844. During this period he wrote Julian: or, Scenes in Judea (1841), depicting incidents in the life of Jesus, portions of which had appeared in the Examiner. This work, also, went through several editions. In 1848-49 Ware spent more than a year abroad, chiefly in Italy. Upon his return he delivered a course of lectures in several cities, which he published in 1851 under the title Sketches of European Capitals. Another course, which he did not live to deliver, appeared in book form after his death - Lectures on the Works and Genius of Washington Allston (1852). He was the author of a memoir of Nathaniel Bacon in Jared Sparks's Library of American Biography, and edited American Unitarian Biography. During the later years of his life he resided in Cambridge, where he died.
Achievements
Connections
On June 10, 1823, he was married to Mary, daughter of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of Cambridge, a sister of the wife of his brother Henry; they had seven children, four of whom survived their father.