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David Atwood Wasson

(1823-1887)
Maine & Massachusetts

"[David Atwood Wasson] was born in West Brooksville (nearly opposite Castine) on the 14th of May, 1823. By teaching in winter and performing hard manual labor in summer, he secured enough money to carry him to the middle of his Junior year in Bowdoin College. In a literary criticism published in the columns of the Portland Transcript, Mr. Champney tells us that this author was noted in college for his acquirements as a mathematician and a debater. After leaving Bowdoin he read law in an office in Sedgwick, but soon abandoned the legal profession, and entered upon the study of divinity in the Theological Seminary at Bangor. He was settled as assistant pastor of the Congregational Church at Groveland, Mass., on finishing his course in the Seminary, remaining in that capacity for a single year. Later, he established in Groveland an independent society, of which he remained the head from 1852 to 1858. In the latter year he was attacked with an incurable spinal disorder which, with the exception of a short time spent in foreign travel, kept him within doors the rest of his life, near Boston. He died in January, 1887, at West Medford, Mass. Mr. Wasson was a voluminous prose writer, contributing to the leading publications of the day, and a volume of sparkling poems from his pen was issued after his decease." [George Bancroft Griffith (ed.), The Poets of Maine 295 (Portland, Maine: Elwell, Pickard & Co., 1888)]

David Atwood Wasson, 1823-1887

Poems

The Mystic
Daniel Howard Sinclair Nicholson & A.H.E. Lee (eds.),
The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse
(1917)

Poetry

David Atwood Wasson, Poems (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1888)(1887) [online text]

Writings

Charles H. Foster (ed.), Beyond Concord: Selected Writings of David Atwood Wasson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965)

Addresses

David Atwood Wasson, Religion Divorced from Theology: a farewell discourse, preached before the Congregational Society in Groveland, August 29, 1852 (Boston: Thurston, Torry & Emerson, 1852)

__________________, Sacrifical Religion and Spiritual Religion. An installation sermon, preached before the Groveland Independent Church, Sunday, May 1, 1853 (Boston: Printed by Thurston, Torry & Emerson, 1853)

__________________, Ancient Feasts and Modern Famine: a sermon preached before the Worcester Free Church, Sunday, Dec. 2, 1855 (Worcester: Baker, Trumbull & Barnes, 1855)

__________________, The Universe No Failure, a sermon, preached before the Worcester Free Church, Sunday, Nov. 4th, 1855 (Worcester: Charles Hamilton, 1856)

__________________, Christianity and Universal Religion: A Discourse delivered before the 28th Congregational Society of Boston, Nov. 19, 1865 (Boston, Parker, 1865)

__________________, The Radical Creed: A Discourse at the installation of Rev. David A. Wasson, as minister of the twenty-eighth Congregational Society of Boston, May 7, 1865 / delivered by the pastor elect ; with an appendix containing the installation services (Boston: Walker, Fuller, and Company, 1865)

Writings

David Atwood Wasson, Theodore Parker as Religious Reformer ([New Bedford, Mass., 1877])

__________________, Essays, Religious, Social, Political (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1889)(biographical sketch by O.B. Frothingham)

Bibliography

Charles H. Foster (ed.), Beyond Concord: Selected Writings of David Atwood Wasson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965)