Rev. Alonzo A. Miner

Rev. Alonzo A. Miner, reformer and Universalist divine, son of Benajah Ames and Amanda (Carey) Miner, was born Aug. 17, 1814, in Lempster, N. H., and died in Boston, June 15, 1895, of heart trouble. He was the grandson of Charles Miner, a Revolutionary soldier, and descendant of Thomas Miner, who came to Charlestown in 1830.  
     From his sixteenth to his twentieth year, Dr. Miner taught in schools. He was associated with James Garvin in 1834-35 in the joint conduct of the Cavendish (Vt.) Academy, and from 1835 to 1839 was at the head of the Unity (N. H.) Scientific and Military Academy. In 1838 he received the fellowship of the Universalist Church, and was ordained to its ministry in 1839.  
He recently closed his twenty-fourth year on the State board of education, and for nearly twenty years was chairman of the board of visitors of the State Normal Art School, which he was largely inf1ucntial in establishing. He was a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and of the executive committee of the American Peace Society.  
     He delivered the Boston civic oration July 4, 1855; received the degree of A.M. from Tufts College, 1861; S.T.D. from Harvard, 1863; and LL.D. from Tufts College, 1875, and was president of that institution from 1862 to 1875 retaining all this time his pastorate of the Columbus Avenue Universalist Society, of Boston, a society with which he was connected for nearly fifty years. He officiated at nearly twenty-three hundred funerals and solemnized nearly three thousand marriages. 
     He was also president of the executive committee of the trustees of Tufts College, president of the trustees of the Bromfield School at Harvard, of the board of trustees of Dean Academy at Franklin, and of the trustees and board of directors of the Universalist Publishing House, Boston, of which he was the originator. He was president of the Anti-Tenement-House League.  
     For twenty years he was president of the Massachusetts Temperance Alliance, and preached the election sermon before the legislature in 1884. which he handled so severely that it repealed the law providing for the annual election sermon. To perpetuate the Prohibition Party work, Dr. Miner permitted the use of his name as candidate for governor of the State when the politicians had frightened all others from the field.  
     Dr. Miner was connected with the Prohibition Party from its foundation. He was the candidate of the party for governor of Massachusetts in 1878, and for mayor of Boston in 1893. His platform work has been spread over more than fifty years and all the New England States, and often extended into other States and British Provinces. His literary work has been given to the public chief1y through magazines and the public press. 

-- An Album of Representative Prohibitionists (1895)

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