First Universalist Society and Judith Sargent Murray
Corner of Ash and Bridge Streets
Universalism began taking hold in Salem in the late 1700s, when
Nathaniel Frothingham hosted gatherings in his home to welcome America’s
first Universalist preacher, John Murray. A basic tenet of Universalism
was the idea that men and women are equal in the eyes of God —
not unlike views expressed by other liberal religious faiths such
as Quakerism. John Murray’s wife, Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820),
had embraced Universalism as a young girl and, as an adult, championed
women’s rights in her published writing. Her landmark essay
“On the Equality of the Sexes” was published in the prestigious
Massachusetts Magazine in 1790, followed closely by an essay
on raising daughters as “rational beings.”41
In 1795, Judith became the first American, male or female, to have
a play performed in Boston and in 1798 the first woman to self-publish
a book. The Gleaner — mainly a compilation of political
essays — became a minor classic. Among her advance subscribers
were George and Martha Washington and John and Abigail Adams. Judith’s
commitment to girls’ education led her to help start a female
academy in Dorchester in 1803 with her cousin Judith Saunders and
her friend Clementine Beach. Throughout her adult life, Judith Sargent
Murray also kept letter books in which she made copies of letters
she wrote between 1765 and 1818. Only recently discovered, these
letter books offer a new eyewitness account of life primarily on
the North Shore and in Boston and are considered the only such document
kept systematically by a woman.
Although she was born in Gloucester and later lived in Boston,
Judith had many ties to Salem besides helping to establish the first
Universalist Society. She and John Murray were married in Salem
in 1788; Judith was a frequent correspondent with her aunt Mary
Turner Sargent (see S1); and she frequently
visited the homes of her cousins, Thomas and Elizabeth Elkins Saunders
(see S31), and her friends, Dr. Joshua
and Olive Plummer. Judith seems to have had a lasting influence
on the Plummers’s daughter Caroline (see S26)
who visited the Murrays regularly in Gloucester and Boston. Caroline
grew up to become one of Salem’s leading philanthropists, and
was deeply interested in culture, education, and liberal religion.
Notes
41. Judith Sargent Murray, “On the Domestic
Education of Children,” Massachusetts Magazine, May,
1790.
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