Author: Ware, Henry, Jr.
Biography:
WARE, Henry, Jr. (1794-1843: ANBO)
Although in many ways Ware followed in the footsteps of his father Henry Ware Sr. (1764-1845), he also put his own stamp on the Unitarian movement in which both were leaders. He was born in Hingham MA, one of the ten children of Henry Ware Sr. and his first wife, Mary Clarke. His mother died in 1805, the year in which his father became Professor of Theology at Harvard and moved the family to Cambridge MA. (Henry Sr. married again twice in 1807; he and his third wife gave Henry Jr. nine step-siblings.) He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard (AB 1812), taught briefly, then studied for the ministry and was ordained at the Second Church (Unitarian) in Boston in 1817. In the same year, he married Elizabeth Watson Waterhouse; the couple had three children. He was a very successful minister, noted for his practical efforts on behalf of his congregation as well as for his fluent extemporaneous preaching. He supported missionary work, served as editor of the Unitarian periodical Christian Discipline for four years, and was instrumental in the founding of the American Unitarian Association. His first wife having died in 1824, in 1827 he married Mary Lovell Pickard, with whom he had six children. In 1830 he resigned his position to become professor of pastoral care and pulpit oratory at the Harvard Divinity School, where he was a founder of the Philanthropic Society and the Cambridge Anti-Slavery Society. Apart from the two occasional poems in this bibliography, he was the author of influential professional publications such as Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching (1824) and On the Formation of Christian Character (1831). Ware suffered from ill health for much of his life and chose to retire in 1842; he died in Framingham MA and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. His brother John Ware (q.v.) wrote a memoir of his life (1846). (ANBO [both father and son] 13 Dec. 2020; ancestry.com 13 Dec. 2020; findagrave.com 13 Dec. 2020) HJ