University of North Carolina at Asheville
D.H. Ramsey Library
Special Collections/University Archives

Manuscript Register 
for

 Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville
(Asheville, NC)  
1950 -

Title

Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville (Asheville, NC) 1950-

Creator

Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville (Asheville, NC)

Alt. Identifier

 http://www.uuasheville.org/Timeline.php

Subject Keyword

Unitarian Universalist ; Unitarianism ; Unitarians; Rev. Henry Addison Westall ; churches ; religion ; ministers ; architecture ; architects ; congregations ; Mark Ward ; James Anderson Inman ; Inman, North Carolina ; Thomas Wolfe ; Charles Frazier ; Julia Westall Wolfe ;  kindergarten ; vocational training ; Inman Chapel ; Forks of the Pigeon, North Carolina ; Canton, North Carolina ;

Subject LCSH

Unitarian Universalist churches -- United States -- History. 
Unitarianism -- History. 
Unitariërs. 

Westall, Henry Addison, Rev.
Church buildings -- North Carolina -- Asheville
Murray, John, 1741-1815
Unitarianism -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century

Southern States -- Church history -- 20th century

Unitarianism -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century

Southern States -- Church history -- 20th century

Description

The collection spans the years from 1950 to the present. The material in the collection includes various church activities, the minutes of meetings, photographs, membership lists, service bulletins, and the plans for construction of the church on Charlotte Street.  It also includes papers related to the governing board (Board of Trustees) and to the various  ministers who have headed the Asheville, NC church. Included in the administrative records are minutes, annual reports and administrative correspondence; the personal correspondence of ministers of the church and the correspondence related to the activities of the various committees that functioned within the church.may also be found.  Papers related to specific individuals and events are found throughout the collection.  Personal oral histories are also included in the materials as are the taped sermons of some of the ministers, particularly their more recent sermons and are included with the collected oral histories located here:   http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/oralhistory/default_uuca.html  

Publisher

D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville 28804

Contributor

 DeAnn Brame

Date Original

 1950-

Type

Collection ; Text ; Image

Format

 10 cartons

Source

 M2009.

Language

English

Relation

See Unitarian Universalist Oral History Collections : http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/oralhistory/default_uuca.html  D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, UNC Asheville. ; Unitarian Universalist Church Asheville, NC Homepage ;

Coverage Spatial

Asheville, NC ; Canton, NC

Rights

No restrictions.
Any display, publication, or public use must credit the D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville. Copyright retained by the creators of certain items in the collection, or their descendents, as stipulated by United States copyright law.  

Donor

 ;

Acquisition

 2009-07-30

Citation

Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville (Asheville, NC) 1950-, D.H. Ramsey Library, Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville 28804.

Processed by

DeAnn Brame, summer 2009 for the Universalist Unitarian Church and as student staff of the UNCA Special Collections, fall 2009.

According to Westall’s daughter, between 1894 and 1897, her family lived on Sunset Mountain and on Sundays her father preached to a “sparse congregation of Unitarians” who met in an “Upper Room,” probably of the Odd Fellows Hall on Broadway Street, “used for civic meetings and band practice, grim, bare and a little shabby, [it] contained, besides rows of wooden settles, only a reading desk and a piano. When my father sat in the high-backed chair his head showed above the lectern so that it seemed to be resting on the Book. The ‘two or three gathered together’ in that place moved on a higher plane than the rest of the town, my father insisted.’” They were mostly from the North and had come “to occupy, for a few months of the year, estates outside of town to which they expected to retire later.” “Besides this small coterie, a doctor or lawyer or two, and the visiting teachers, scientists, artists and writers may have concentrated in the congregation the intellectual cream of the community.” (Elaine Westall Gould, Look Behind You, Thomas Wolfe: Ghosts of a Common Tribal Heritage. Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1976, 33.)

After three years, the Westalls moved back to Massachusetts, where Henry preached to the Unitarian congregation in Medford. Thomas Wolfe visited them frequently during his years at Harvard.

Itinerant Universalist preachers occasionally came to the mountains even before the Civil War. Inman Chapel, Forks of the Pigeon, near Canton, North Carolina, was built in 1902 by the Reverend James Anderson Inman, brother of “Inman” of Charles Frazier’sCold Mountain fame. He also fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and was imprisoned in Chicago. He had been recognized as a Universalist preacher as early as 1859 and was officially ordained in 1868. After Inman’s death in 1913, the Women’s National Missionary Association of the Universalist Church sent the Rev. Hannah Jewett Powell to continue his work. Inman Chapel advanced a socially progressive ministry that included many firsts for the county and even for the state: a kindergarten, vocational training, a summer school, handicraft classes, adult education classes, a school for African American children, a library, and the county’s first free public health clinic. After the Rev. Powell retired, the congregation declined and closed in 1927. Inman Chapel has been restored and can still be visited. (Phyllis Inman Barnett, At the Foot of Cold Mountain, Waynesville, NC: Pigeon River Press, 2008).

[Paula Robbins for the Unitarian Universalist Church, Asheville.]