A little pamphlet published in 1912 reveals that the resurrection of the long dormant Sacramento Unitarian Society in 1911 was related to the Unitarian Church then in the neighboring village of Woodland in Yolo County. By sharing the services of one minister, the two bodies could afford professional guidance, which otherwise was not practicable then, because together they probably paid $100 a month minister’s salary.
The front cover of the 4x6 inch, fourteen-page booklet reads:
UNITARIAN YEAR BOOK
Sacramento and Woodland California – 1912
Franklin Baker, Minister
Residence - 2924 F St. Phone M. 2871
Services
Sacramento: 11:00 A.M. Woodland: 7:30 P.M.
The flyleaf reads:
UNITARIAN FAITH
The Fatherhood of God.
The Brotherhood of Man.
The Leadership of Jesus.
The Progress of Mankind, onward and upward forever.
The Covenant of the Woodland Church reads:
In the love of truth, and in the spirit of Jesus, we unite for the worship of God and the Service of man.
The Fellowship Roll contained the names of fifty-two persons — thirty-two females and twenty males. Also listed were the following organizations:
Miss Lola Bray and her sister Julia were were long time members of the Sacramento Society and are still remembered affectionately as the “Bray Sisters”. They were related to an early-day Briggs family who in 1856 settled at Buckeye, now the town of Winters in Yolo County. As two of five children who lost their parents, they were raised by an uncle and aunt, John and Julia Briggs, who moved to Woodland for the children’s education. Both girls became school teachers. In the Sacramento Society their talents and devotion were later applied to organizing and teaching in the church school for more than twenty years. Julia left a bequest to our Society for the religious education of Unitarian children. It continues to this day as the “Julia Bray Fund.”1
The Sacramento section of the Year Book listed the names of seventy-five members. The Women’s Alliance met every Monday at 2:30 p.m.; the Sunday School met at 12 Sunday. One page carried an unidentified quotation:
The religion of these churches is free, not creed bound; scientific, not dogmatic; spiritual, not traditional; universal, not sectarian. It stands for the realization of the highest moral ideal of humanity, both personal and social; and the cultivation and dissemination of the spiritual qualities of reverence, peace and love.
To place this period of development in context with the year 1912: That spring the unsinkable luxury liner “Titanic” struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank, but not before its newly developed radio telegraph called rescue ships toward survivors. The kings and emperors of Europe had but two more summers for rehearsing their armies for the first battles of World War I in August of 1914. The euphoric but ephemeral dream of the progress of mankind “onward and upward forever” was about to be eclipsed by reality.
1 Thanks to Society member Phyllis Gardiner, who wrote the biography of Lola and Julia Bray in 1975, their history has been preserved.
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