James Eddy

Brief excerpt from the sermon "THREE INSPIRING WOMEN" delivered at the First Parish in Wayland, Mass. on October 14, 2001 by the Rev. Ken Sawyer ....

"Actually, there are several better reasons for making the Providence trip. The big one, of course, is the chance to be there for Steve Landale's big day. But another is the building, a picture of which I’ve put up on the bulletin board downstairs. It’s a fairly big Greek revival place on a short side street off of an old commercial thoroughfare on the west side of the city. As people may hear in my sermon there, the building was put up by a wealthy businessman, James Eddy, on his own land, adjacent to his home.

He tried to give the building to the Free Religious Association, which was the congregation he worshipped with locally, but he had one stipulation, that services there be committed to the worship of a loving, universal Father-god. The FRA declined, and the building sat unused for 13 years until Eddy’s own funeral.

Eddy left the building to the care of three trustees (his two daughters and a friend) along with $100,000 and instructions to create a religious society devoted to Eddy’s own religious outlook. Anna Garlin Spencer, the wife of a Unitarian minister in town, was hired to bring this about. She compiled Eddy’s views into a Bond of Union to which members of the new society would subscribe."

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