John Murray

MURRAY, John. b. Alton, Hampshire, England, ca. 1840; d. Boston, Massachusetts, 3 September 1815.  Murray is regarded as the founder of the Universalist denomination in America (see Unitarian-Universalist hymnody, USA*).  He contributed five hymn texts to James Relly and John Relly’s Christian Hymns, Poems, and Sacred Songs: Sacred to the Praise of God Our Saviour (Portsmouth, Massachusetts, 1782).  His wife, Judith Murray*, became an important American literary figure and Universalist writer.  Commencing on p. 15 of his autobiography (Life, identified below), Murray writes that ‘I think, if I mistake not, I was ushered into this state of being on the 10th day of December, in the year of...