The records of the First Unitarian Society have been organized in three parts, corresponding to groups of records gifted to the Historical Society at different times. Part 1 consists of records loaned for microfilming in 1959; Part 2 comprises records presented between 1959 and 1976 and organized in the Archives in 1976; Part 3 contains records presented between 1976 and 1981 and organized in the Archives in 1981.
Records in Part 1, the Original Collection, date 1902-1959 and include a church covenant and records of the christening of children and the confirmation of adults. Records in Part 2, the 1976 Additions, date 1878-1976 and are described in detail below. Those in Part 3, the 1981 Additions, date 1951-1980 and are also described in detail below.
PART 2, the 1976 ADDITIONS
Part 2 of the records of the First Unitarian Society, Madison consists of the first accession of the Society's paper records, which earlier had been processed under the title Madison, Wisconsin - First Unitarian Society (former call number, Wis/Mss/FI), and six additions to the collection made between April 1967 and May 1976. These records date 1878-1976 and have been combined and organized into the following categories: Organization, Administration, Correspondence, Finance, Fund-Raising, Property, Services and Ministerial, Social Action Committee, Meeting House Nursery School, Other Committees and Groups, and Denominational Affairs.
The records of ORGANIZATION supply the names of officers and the governing structure of the Society, mainly for the period 1930 to 1975. Missing information can often be recovered from the minutes classified under ADMINISTRATION. Filed with the lists of organizations and committees is a pamphlet, This is the First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin, probably printed in the early 1970s, which summarizes their respective functions.
The ADMINISTRATION subseries is the most important segment of the Society records. The minutes of the trustees and the parish summarize their activities and those of many church committees and organizations. Both sets are complete to 1927, and both are interrupted at the same time only for the period 1945 to 1950, when the Society was in transition from Dayton Street to University Bay Drive. Among the related papers filed with the unbound parish minutes are committee reports to the annual meeting.
The CORRESPONDENCE deals mainly with routine business. The construction, maintenance, and financing of buildings constitute the major topic. For the period after 1952, these same subjects are treated in the letters classified under FUND-RAISING and PROPERTY. The gap in correspondence between 1889 and 1907 roughly coincides with the interval between the completion of the original church and the beginning of the parish house. The Society's chronic financial difficulties necessitated frequent appeals to the American Unitarian Association, various Madison lending institutions, individual parishioners, and the Women's Alliance. Among the correspondents are a number of intellectual and political leaders of the University, the city, and the state, including William F. Allen, Reuben G. Thwaites, and William G. Rice. The letters document their work in the Society rather than the reasons for their adherence to liberal religion. There is little ministerial correspondence. The scrapbook has a personal recollection of Unitarian meetings in Madison in 1855 by the Rev. H.F. Bond. The record of opposition to the Rev. Rupert Holloway, in which hints of Socialist-Communist infighting supplemented charges of professional inadequacy, should be read in conjunction with the minutes of the parish meetings. Two letters (1921) of Laura Loyson, a medical charity worker in postwar France whose labors were supported by American Unitarians, describe the social and economic conditions she encountered. One letter (1944, April 4) of Helen Groves, wife of Harold, protests the exclusion of women from a meeting of the Laymen's League and discusses the problem of reconciling the demands of family and community life.
The major records of FINANCE are the monthly and annual treasurer's reports, only a few years of which are missing for the period 1908 to 1976. Some of the gaps can be filled in by referring to the minutes classified under ADMINISTRATION. The ledgers and journals furnish more detailed information for the years 1907 to 1910, 1915 to 1925, and 1935 to 1965. The principal earlier financial records are the cash accounts and subscription lists, beginning in 1895. Similar items for the 1950s and 1960s were returned to the donor.
The interrelated FUND-RAISING and PROPERTY subseries deal mainly with the Frank Lloyd Wright meeting house. The documentation is better for the latter part of the period of construction. A number of letters addressed to the architect discuss plans for the building and show how the Wright Foundation helped finance its completion, but only one brief note bears Wright's signature. He belonged to the Society, which his father helped establish, but it is not evident from these records that he was a leading member. The inquiries about the meeting house reveal immediate and wide-spread interest in Europe as well as the United States. A related item in the subseries on SERVICES AND MINISTERIAL is Fred I. Cairns' “Architecture and Worship.” He resigned from the Madison ministry in 1951, and the sermon presents his view that the Society had concentrated its energies on the construction of an architectural marvel to the detriment of its spiritual life. The records of canvassing show the Society's occasional resort to professional fund-raisers since the completion of the meeting house.
The records of SERVICES AND MINISTERIAL have two major divisions: the programs of Sunday services and the texts of weekly radio talks. The programs contain both the order of worship, which might include dances, readings from secular writings, or other unconventional elements, and the calendar of coming events. The radio talks, delivered by Mr. Gaebler and guest speakers, might be taken to represent the sermons preached in the meeting house itself. The broadcasts began in 1943, under the ministry of Kenneth L. Patton, and his series on humanistic religion were published in 1946 as Beyond Doubt. The requests for copies of the talks show the geographic distribution of the audience, and a few of the letters attack the liberal theological or political content of the broadcasts in terms consonant with the McCarthy era. The play, “Perfectibility,” is a parishioner's dramatization of a discussion among famous nineteenth-century American women about their proper role in society and politics.
The SOCIAL ACTION COMMITTEE series offers a sporadic record of actions in support of various social and political causes. The files of correspondence and related papers include minutes of monthly meetings, copies of outgoing letters, and resolutions submitted to the parish and the American Unitarian or Unitarian Universalist Association. Such items are most abundant for the period 1954 to 1956, when the committee was chaired by Margaret Curti, wife of Merle, and Jackson Tiffany. The United Nations was a major interest in the 1950s. In the following decade the emphasis was on civil rights, both in Madison (in support of Madison Citizens for Fair Housing) and in the South (with sponsorship of Freedom Workers through the Council of Federated Organizations). Mailings and publications of Unitarian and other social action groups furnish additional evidence of the members' range of interests.
The MEETING HOUSE NURSERY SCHOOL subseries has few financial and administrative records and little general correspondence, but the file of newsletters and other mailings to parents constitutes a detailed though interrupted record of school activities between 1952 and 1971. Major episodes in the institution's organizational history are documented in the letters and reports dealing with the dismissal of director Gehrta Amlie in 1954 and the movement toward legal separation from the Society beginning twenty years later. Few of the items relating to the Madison Nursery School Association, Community Co-ordinated Child Care in Dane County, the Week of the Young Child, and Project Head Start either originated with the Society's nursery school or furnish information about it. The name was changed from “Playhouse” to “Meeting House Nursery School” in 1954.
The records of OTHER ORGANIZATIONS AND GROUPS are generally fragmentary, but most such bodies in the Society's history are represented. The minutes of the Contemporary Club, the Channing Club, the poetry readings, the Laymen's League, and the Unity Club illustrate Society members' intellectual interests before the Second World War. The Town Meeting program was a series of discussions co-ordinated, in season, with the national broadcast, America's Town Meeting of the Air. The correspondence of the Pulpit Committee, detailing the preliminaries to the selection of Max Gaebler, should be read in conjunction with the minutes of contemporary parish meetings. Committee X, established in 1952 to help pay for the new meeting house, originated the Dance Fellowship, the Meeting House Square Dancers, and such short-lived projects as the Art Fellowship and the Film Series. The minutes and correspondence of the Membership Committee reveal extensive neighborhood organization.
The major items in the DENOMINATIONAL AFFAIRS subseries are the bound volumes of records of the Wisconsin Conference of Unitarian (and Independent) Societies, 1867-1903. The correspondence of the Unitarian Ministers' Association, 1960-1961, relates more to routine business than to the issues of Unitarian-Universalist merger.
PART 3, the 1981 ADDITIONS
These additions, 1951-1980, supplement those records donated earlier. They bring the files of newsletters and WIBA radio talk transcriptions up to date and add executive, financial, and committee reports as well as documentation of special events and national and regional organizational activity to existing files. A noteworthy addition are the plans of the First Unitarian Meeting House, designed in 1948 by Frank Lloyd Wright; also interesting are papers regarding the formation of the Central Midwest District of Unitarian churches.
Information on organization and administration can be found in the “Denominational Affairs” files in responses to questionnaires sent out by the Unitarian Universalist and American Unitarian Associations as well as in the ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION subseries.
The CORRESPONDENCE file consists of newsletters and attachments. (Attachments relevant to other files, such as fundraising, treasurer's and committee reports, parish election nominations, etc, have been separated to those files.) Attachments generally announce upcoming events or solicit member opinions and are filed ahead of their accompanying newsletter. Newsletters were sent out irregularly during the summer months.
The PROPERTY file consists of the Frank Lloyd Wright plans for the Meeting House, built 1949-1951, and two reports of the Prairie Site Committee. Documentation about the construction of the Meeting House may be found in box 7 folders 6-7. The Prairie Site committee reports concern property bought in the late 1960s with the idea of constructing another church; the records of the Friends of the Meeting House, who are concerned with its history and upkeep, are in the file entitled “Other Committees and Groups.”
In the SERVICES AND MINISTERIAL file are transcriptions of radio talks given on WIBA radio, beginning in 1976. Some dates are missing and occasionally transcripts are misdated. The “Special Events” section of the file includes copies of addresses given by John Hayward and Rabbi Manfred Swarzensky. See also “Denominational Affairs” for literature relating to conferences held in Madison.
Both the MEETING HOUSE NURSERY SCHOOL and OTHER COMMITTEES AND GROUPS files include a small amount of material describing the relationship between the philosophy of the Society and its activities, such as the educational philosophy expressed in “Learning Through Play” and the description of the Social Concerns Committee.
The DENOMINATIONAL AFFAIRS material is one of the larger groups of additions. Most of its contents date in the 1960s and include minutes and resolutions of various regional and national organizations. They concern not only internal affairs but occasionally document responses to social questions. As mentioned above, the formation of the Central Midwest District in 1963-64 is documented in a series of correspondence, minutes, and suggested and approved by-laws; and questionnaires sent to the Society by the Unitarian Universalist and American Unitarian Associations provide yearly statistics and other information about the Society. Included in the files are brochures of conferences, such as those of the Western Unitarian Conference and Midwest Universalist Conference, which became the Midwest Unitarian Universalist Conference when these organizations merged in 1961.
