| Rev. George Leonard Chaney | |
| Birth Date: | 24 December 1836 |
| Birth Place: | Salem, Massachusetts |
| Burial Place: | Salem, Massachusetts |
| Death Place: | Salem, Massachusetts |
| Years Active: | 33 |
| Occupation: | Unitarian Minister |
| Education: | Meadville Theological School, Pennsylvania |
| Spouse: | Caroline Isabel Chaney (née Carter) |
| Parents: | James Chaney and Harriet Webb Chaney |
| Children: | George Carter Chaney |
| Religion: | Unitarian |
| Ordained: | 1862 |
| Offices Held: | Minister, Southern Superintendent |
George Leonard Chaney (1836-1922) was a Boston Unitarian minister who served the city’s Hollis Street Church for 15 years. In 1882, at the American Unitarian Association's (A.U.A.) request, he moved to Atlanta to organize the first Unitarian church in that city. As the A.U.A. Southern Superintendent, he was a leader in expanding Unitarianism across the South. He later moved to Richmond, Virginia and established another Unitarian church. In 1895, he retired from his superintendent and ministerial duties and returned to Massachusetts.
George Leonard Chaney, born in the Massachusetts coastal city of Salem on December 24, 1836, was the fourth and last child of James Chaney (1797-1884) and Harriet Webb Chaney (1803-1900). His siblings included Harriet Webb (1828-1896), Mary Webb (1830-1917), and James Henry (1832-1862).[1]
Chaney’s father was a distant descendant of Scottish immigrants who settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s. The senior Chaney owned a general store that sold a variety of beverages and foods, including rum, brandy, spices, meat, coffee, butter, and general household goods.[1]
In 1823, the senior Chaney briefly partnered with Stephen Haradan in a mercantile enterprise that sold goods to the general public and sailing vessels. After the partnership ended in 1824, he continued in the dry goods business, achieving a degree of success that led him to sell his business to William B. Ashton, an associate, in 1853. Chaney continued in the mercantile business at a reduced scale, now as a wholesaler.[1]
George Leonard Chaney was educated at Salem High School and the Latin Grammar School. Afterward, he continued his education at Harvard College, graduating in 1859 with a Bachelor of Arts. In his senior year, Chaney competed for a Boylston Elocution prize for delivering a five-minute memorized talk in English, Greek, or Latin, placing second in his category.[2] [3] He belonged to several college societies, including the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society.[4]
Following his graduation, he left Boston and moved to Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he was employed as a tutor. He later entered the nearby Meadville Lombard Theological School, a Unitarian seminary, and graduated with a divinity degree in 1862.[5]
=Marriage and Children=In January 1871, Chaney, 35, married Caroline Isabel Carter, 26 (1845-1925) from Leominster, Massachusetts.[6] She was a distant descendant of Rev. Thomas and Mary Carter, early Puritan settlers who arrived in New England in the early 1600s. Over the generations, the Carter family settled throughout New England and New York. One relative, Captain Joseph Oliver Carter (1802-1850), settled in Honolulu. He was a seafaring captain of merchant ships that traded with China, Hawaii, Mexico, Alaska, and California.
The Chaneys had one son, George Carter Chaney, born in November 1871. He was an attorney who married Evadne Hubbard Jewett in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1901. They lived in Salem and had two children, Constance Jewett and Oliver Carter.
=Northern Ministry=Chaney’s Northern Ministry spanned the years 1862 to 1882.
Not long after he graduated from Meadville Theological Seminary, Boston’s Hollis Street Church called the 26-year-old Chaney to their pulpit in 1862.,[7] This call to the Hollis Street pulpit was Chaney’s first pastorate. Reflecting on this period, an 82-year-old Chaney noted, "A minister’s first parish is his real school of preparation for the ministry.”[8] The imprint of this first pastorate is seen in his future endeavors. Chaney served the Hollis Street Church for 15 years, from 1862 to 1877.
Founded in 1732 as a Congregationalist church, in 1800, the Hollis Street Church realigned with the newly emerging Unitarian movement. Chaney followed notable Unitarian ministers such as Horace Holley (1809-1818), Rev. John Pierpont (1819-1845), and Rev. Starr King (1848-1860). King, a forceful and tireless orator, left Boston to become the pastor of the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco, California. King died unexpectedly at age 40 in 1864.
Chaney was the recipient of the church’s gravitas and the prestige of its former ministers. Boston’s most distinguished Unitarian ministers performed his ordination ceremony in October 1862. Attending ministers included Rev. H.W. Foote of King's Chapel, who offered Chaney the Right Hand of Fellowship, Rev. F. H. Hedge from Brookline, who delivered a sermon, Rev. William Newell of Cambridge, who gave the ordination prayer, and Rev. Edward E. Hale of South Congregational Church who charged the incoming pastor.[9]
Chaney’s circle of influential Unitarian ministers grew during his Hollis Street ministry. In August 1864, two years after his ordination, Chaney offered the Right Hand of Fellowship during the ordination of another new minister, Rev. Francis E. Abbott. Again, Rev. Edward E. Hale and Rev. Henry W. Foote were present. Other Unitarian ministers, including Rev. James Freeman Clarke and Rev. William P. Tilden, also participated.[10]
Later that same year, in December, Chaney again joined Tilden and Hale at the ordination of Rev. Horatio Alger, Jr., when he became the pastor of the Unitarian Church in Brewster, Massachusetts.[11]
Later, Alger became a famous author of popular “rags-to-riches” young adult novels.
Chaney faced three challenges at the start of his Hollis Street ministry. First, he was filling a pulpit that his predecessor, Rev. Starr King, had vacated two and a half years earlier. His society needed “shepherding” to a new ministry—a shepherding made difficult by his second challenge. Some at the church hoped that the beloved Starr King would soon return and attempted to preserve his church customs and practices. The third challenge was the American Civil War (1861-1865), which drew the church into an unfolding national tragedy. Chaney noted that the war changed the church's primary concern from its members to “the soldiers and the freedman.”[12]
In October 1863, Chaney hosted Rev. Rufus Stebbins, the president of the American Unitarian Association (1862-1865), at his Hollis Street Church. Rev Stebbins described the Association’s missionary work to the U.S. Federal army, which consisted of distributing thousands of religious tracts and visits by Unitarian ministers.[13]
Two months later, in December 1863, under the auspices of the United States Sanitary Commission, Chaney served as a minister in an army hospital following the Battle of Fredericksburg[14] . The Sanitary Commission, created at the start of the war to care for sick and wounded Federal soldiers, was led by a fellow Harvard graduate and Unitarian minister, Rev. Henry W. Bellows.
Chaney joined other Boston Unitarian ministers in the 1864 U.S. presidential election, delivering supportive sermons for the Union and Abraham Lincoln. The Boston Evening Transcript reported that the sermons “may rightly be classed in the front rank of ministerial efforts. As in the day of the Revolution, the pulpit thunders against traitors and oppressors.”[15] A few months later, in April 1865, Chaney delivered an impassioned eulogy for the assassinated U.S. President Lincoln from the same pulpit from which he had endorsed him.[16]
In December 1864, Chaney was joined by Rev. Edward Hale, Rev. William Tilden, Rev. G.H. Hepworth, and other Boston Unitarian ministers in the dedication of the newly erected Hollis Street Chapel. The two-story brick chapel provided seating for 300 people on the lower floor, a minister’s office, a committee room, and a large hall for church programs on the upper floor. One such program was the church’s sewing circle.[17]