Alonzo Ames Miner

Alonzo Ames Miner (August 17, 1814 – June 14, 1895) was a Universalist minister. He was the second president of Tufts University.

Alonzo Ames Miner
2nd President of Tufts College
In office 1862–1875
Preceded by	Hosea Ballou II
Succeeded by	Elmer Hewitt Capen
Personal details
Born	August 17, 1814 Lempster, New Hampshire
Died	June 14, 1895 (aged 80)
Spouse(s)	Maria S. Perley m. August 1836[1]
Profession	Universalist Minister

Origins

Born in Lempster, New Hampshire, he was the second of five children and only son of Benajah Ames and Amanda (Carey) Miner. His father was a descendant of the colonist Thomas Miner.

Career

He taught school in rural Vermont and New Hampshire before being ordained a Universalist minister in 1839. He served as pastor to churches in Methuen, Lowell, and Boston, Massachusetts.[2]

Miner supported many moral and civic causes, at various times being on the Board of Trustees at Tufts, the Board of Overseers at Harvard (appointed 1863),[2] the Massachusetts Board of Education (from 1869, serving 24 years),[2] the Board of Visitors to the Massachusetts normal school.[2] For 21 years, he was president of the Massachusetts State Temperance Alliance, and he was the Prohibition candidate for Governor of Massachusetts in 1878.[2] One of the founders of Tufts, he rescued the college from near bankruptcy and instituted many new educational programs as president from 1862 to 1875.

References

• Emerson, George H. (1896). Life of Alonzo Ames Miner. Universalist Publishing House.
• Alonzo Ames Miner, 1862 – Tufts Interactive Timeline

Footnotes

1. Rand, John Clark (1890), One of a Thousand: a Series of Biographical Sketches of One Thousand Representative Men, Boston, MA: First National Publishing Company, p. 415.
2. "Miner, Alonzo Ames" . New International Encyclopedia. 1905.

External links

• Records pertaining to marriages and funerals performed and/or attended by Alonzo Ames Miner are in the Andover-Harvard Theological Library at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.