Alfred P. Putnam

Putnam, Rev. Alfred Porter, D.D. (Danvers, Massachusetts, January 10, 1827--April 15, 1906, Salem, Mass.). He was educated at Brown University, A.B. 1852, and graduated from the Harvard Divinity School in 1855. Entering the Unitarian ministry he served a church in Roxbury, Mass., 1855-1864, and the Church of the Saviour, Brooklyn, New York, 1864-1886, when he retired. Brown University gave him the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1871. He wrote no hymns but published in 1874 a book entitled Singers and Songs of the Liberal Faith: being selections of hymns and other sacred poems of the Liberal Church in America, with biographical sketches of the writers. This book includes almost all the hymns by American Unitarian authors which had come into use prior to 1870, and the biographical sketches are generally accurate and adequate in brief space.

--Henry Wilder Foote, DNAH Archives