Noah Worcester

Noah Worcester (November 25, 1758 – October 31, 1837) was a Unitarian clergyman and a seminal figure in history of American pacifism.

Worcester was born in Hollis, New Hampshire, to a father of the same name, who had been one of the framers of the New Hampshire constitution. At age 16, he joined the militia as a fifer during the Revolutionary War, and was at the battle of Bunker Hill, where he narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. He was also at Bennington as a fife major.

In September 1778, he moved to Plymouth, New Hampshire, where he taught, and in February 1782, settled at Thornton, filling several local offices, and was chosen to the legislature. Having turned his attention to theology, he published a Letter to the Rev. John Murray Concerning the Origin of Evil (Newburyport, 1786), and was licensed to preach by a Congregational association in 1786. He became pastor of Thornton in 1787. In 1802 he was employed as Thorton's first missionary in the New Hampshire society then organized, and in that capacity preached and traveled extensively through the northern part of the state. In this period he commenced a prolific writing career, contributing numerous articles to theological and popular journals.

In 1810 he became a pastor in Salisbury, New Hampshire, where his ancestor William Worcester, an emigrant from Salisbury, England, had been the first minister. Three years later, in 1813 he accepted an invitation to edit the The Christian Disciple, a Boston-based periodical founded by the eminent Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing and others, and moved to Brighton, Massachusetts.

Self-educated, he accustomed himself to rigorous mental discipline. Physically, Worcester presented the remarkable contrast of robust man "of uncommon strength", combined with unusual mildness of manner.

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