David Atwood Wasson
David Atwood Wasson was an American minister and essayist born in 1823 in Brooksville, Maine, into a deeply religious Calvinist family. He attended Phillips Andover Academy and later Bowdoin College, where he developed critical views on democracy and faced suspension due to his independent beliefs. After studying law for a year, Wasson enrolled at Bangor Theological Seminary and became a minister in Groveland, Massachusetts, marrying Abbie Smith in 1852. His progressive and Transcendentalist views led to controversy, resulting in his dismissal from the church, after which he founded an independent religious society that attracted many former members. Wasson was also involved in the abolitionist movement and maintained friendships with prominent figures like Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, despite struggling with health issues that limited his activism. He was a prolific writer on social and religious topics, advocating for human rights and justice. Wasson's legacy includes his role in the formation of the Free Religious Association in 1867 and his impact on contemporary freethinking movements. He passed away on January 21, 1887.
On this Page
Subject Terms
David Atwood Wasson
Writer
- Born: May 14, 1823
- Birthplace: Brooksville, Maine
- Died: January 21, 1887
- Place of death: West Medford, Massachusetts
Biography
David Atwood Wasson was born in 1823 in Brooksville, Maine, and raised in a devout Calvinist family led by his father, also named David, a Maine farmer and shipbuilder. Wasson attended Phillips Andover Academy as a boy and young man, and he then worked during the summers and taught during the winters to save enough money to enter Bowdoin College in 1845. Studying classical literature his first year profoundly affected Wasson, who began to see American and French versions and implementations of democracy as misguided and flawed. During his second year in college, Wasson was suspended for two months for what he considered unjust reasons; the school cited disturbances, including one of Wasson’s final acts before leaving the school in 1847, in which he attended a nearby church rather than the school’s own orthodox chapel.
Wasson next studied law for a year in Maine before entering the Bangor Theological Seminary, having been awed by Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus. Wasson married Abbie Smith in 1852, and with the help of her family become minister at the Congregational Church and Society in Groveland, Massachusetts. However, his adherence to his own independent principles and ideas, including philosophies that tended toward Transcendentalism, caused controversy for the young man yet again, and he was dismissed from his position in August, 1852. Wasson believed that Transcendentalist ideas were reconcilable with religious principles but religious authorities disagreed. After his dismissal, Wasson established an independent religious society in Groveland. Many of his former church members joined the society, and Wasson led the group from 1852 to 1858.
Wasson also ministered at the Worcester Free Church in 1855 during the absence of the congregation’s pastor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and when Higginson returned the two men became friends, sharing adamant abolitionist views. Wasson’s frequently poor health prevented him from fully participating in the antislavery movement; by 1858, he had been stricken with an incurable spinal disorder that severely limited his mobility. However, his writings clearly expressed his opposition to slavery, and his essay “A Letter to William Lloyd Garrison,” written in 1860, argues eloquently for the need for abolitionists to stay focused on the rights of human beings and on justice and humanity. Indeed, Wasson became a prolific essayist on social and religious issues, and a mutual respect and admiration was established between him and Transcendentalist author Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom Wasson praised in his 1858 essay “The New World and the New Man.”
Wasson succeeded the late Theodore Parker in the pulpit of the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society in Boston briefly in 1865 before his ill health forced him to resign. The freethinking ideas that he, Higginson, and their contemporaries promoted prompted the formation of the Free Religious Association in 1867, and Wasson was a popular speaker at the group’s meetings. He died on January 21, 1887.