Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento
A Church of Open Minds and Loving Hearts
UUSS HISTORY PART ONE — The First Half Century (1868–1915)
Earliest Events in Sacramento
Within a few years of its founding, Sacramento had moved beyond its original incarnation as a Gold Rush town and turned to the more conventional pursuits of agriculture, trade and government. Schools and churches were built and a library was operating. In the year 1858, the first known Unitarian sermon was delivered. The Sacramento Bee, which then rarely printed church news, carried this notice on Saturday, June 5, 1858: “PREACHING — Rev. Mr. Ritter, Unitarian clergyman, will preach in Rev. Mr. Benton’s church tomorrow afternoon at 3 o‘clock.” It is thought that the church was Congregationalist, located on Sixth Street between I and J.
Nothing more about Rev. Mr. Ritter has been found. Instead, the big news of that Sunday appearing in the Bee was about the newly adopted Sunday Law;1 by Tuesday, fourteen warrants had been issued and four persons arrested for its violation.
A more comprehensive introduction of Unitarianism resulted from visits of Rev. Thomas Starr King to Sacramento shortly after he arrived from Boston to become minister of the San Francisco First Unitarian Church in April of 1860. ln addition, Starr King had two other important goals — keep California in the Union and the abolition of slavery. To those ends he wanted to be widely heard, so he wasted little time in arranging public appearances in the capital city of Sacramento.
The Bee quickly recognized his potential influence, as shown by this wry comment in its columns on May 10, 1860, reprinted from the Petaluma Argus:
THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL — On the departure of the Rev. T. Starr King for California, his congregation presented him with the sum of two thousand dollars. Preaching is becoming a more money-making business than either the legal or medical profession.”
For his first appearance in Sacramento, he came as a popular lecturer, rather than as a Unitarian minister, working for a non-sectarian cause: retirement of the debt of the Sacramento Library Association. Accordingly, paid advertisements in the Bee appeared:
T. STARR KING’s LECTURES
ON WEDNESDAY EVENINGS
May 30th and June 6th
At the Congregational Church
(Sixth Street, between I & J)
Commencing at a quarter past eight o‘clock
Admission $1.00, for the benefit of the
Sacramento Library Association
After the first lecture, the Bee reported, on May 31, 1860:
LECTURE LAST EVENING. The lecture of Rev. T. Starr King last evening drew together one of the largest and most intellectual looking audiences ever convened in Sacramento on a similar occasion. “Substance and Show” was the theme, and its original and eloquent delivery by the speaker received the closest attention for nearly an hour and a half. In every particular the lecture was a complete success and those who staid (sic) away deprived themselves of an intellectual treat as is seldom obtainable in Sacramento.
On the evening of the second lecture, June 6, the Bee had as front-page news a two-column story from San Francisco which may have been the first printed description in Sacramento of Unitarian philosophy. The story reported the debates between Rev. T. Starr King and Episcopalian ministers in Boston and in San Francisco, contrasting the Unitarian and trinitarian theologies.
If anything, this publicity may have been a drawing card for King’s second lecture because the next issue of the Bee, on June 7, reported:
THE LECTURE LAST NIGHT — Rev. Thomas Starr King’s second and last (for the present) lecture was well attended last night. Mr. King is a very popular lecturer, and has drawn out better houses here than were ever drawn before.
Downtown Sacramento in the 1860s
1 “Blue Laws” were enacted in 1858, prohibiting commercial and other worldly activities on Sundays.
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