, and did most
faithful and thorough work for the charity. With him, representing the
Congregationalists, was a very careful and judicious man, engaged for
many years in Sunday-schools and similar movements, Mr. Wm. C. Gilman.
The Dutch Reformed were represented by an experienced friend of
education, Mr. M. T. Hewitt; and the Presbyterians again by one of such
gentleness and humanity, that all sects might have called him
Brother--Mr. W. L. King. To these was added one who has been a great
impelling force of this humane movement ever since-a man of large,
generous nature, and much impulse of temperament, with a high and
refined culture, who has done more to gain support for this charity with
the business community, where he is so influential, than any other one
man--Mr. J. E. Williams, also a Unitarian. Mr. W. had also been engaged
in similar charities in Boston.

During the first year, we added to our board from the Methodists, Dr. J.
L. Phelps; from the Episcopalians, Mr. Archibald Russell (since
deceased), who has accomplished so much as the President of the Board of
the Five Points House of Industry; Mr. George Bird, and Mr. A. S.
Hewitt, who is now the managing head of that great educational
institution, the Cooper Union; from the Presbyterians, the celebrated
Mr. Cyrus W. Field; and from the "Come Outers," Mr. C. W. Elliott, the
genial author of the "New England History." Of all the first trustees,
the only ones in office in 1871 are J. E. Williams, B. J. Howland, M. T.
Hewitt, and C. L. Brace.

On a subsequent year we elected a gentleman who especially represented a
religious body that has always profoundly sympathized with our
enterprise--Mr. Howard Potter, the son of the eminent Episcopal Bishop
of Pennsylvania, and nephew of the Bishop of New York. And yet, of all
the members of our Board, no one has been more entirely unsectarian than
this trustee; and certainly no one has thrown into our charity more
heart and a more unbiased judgment. Mr. Potter is still trustee. Through
him and Mr. B. J. Livingston, who was chosen a few years after, the
whole accounts of the Society were subsequently put in a clear shape,
and the duties of the trustees in supervision made distinct and
regular.

It is an evidence of the simple desire for doing good which actuated
these gentlemen, and of the possibility of a "Christian Union" that,
though representing so many different sects, and ardently attached to
them, there never was