Ballou, Hosea

BALLOU, bɑ-lū´, HOSEA: American Universalist; b. at Richmond, N. H., Apr. 30, 1771; d. at Boston June 7, 1852. He was the son of a poor Baptist minister and had to struggle for an education; began to preach at the age of twenty, and was ordained at the Universalist convention of 1794; settled at Dana (then called Hardwick), Mass., the same year; removed in 1803 to Barnard, Vt., in 1809 to Portsmouth, N. H., in 1815 to Salem, Mass., and in 1818 to Boston, where he took charge of the Second (School Street) Universalist Society. In 1819 he assisted in founding and became editor of the Universalist Magazine (later called The Trumpet, The Universalist, and The Christian Leader), the first Universalist newspaper in America; in 1831, of The Universalist Expositor (afterward The Universalist Quarterly Review). He wrote Notes on the Parables (Randolph, Vt., 1804); A Treatise on the Atonement (1805); Examination of the Doctrine of Future Retribution (Boston, 1834); and several volumes of sermons.

Bibliography: M. M. Ballou Life Story of Hosea Ballou, for the Young, Boston, 1854; T. Whittemore, Life of Hosea Ballou, 2 vols., ib. 1854; O. F. Safford, Hosea Ballou; a Marvellous Life Story, ib. 1889.