The Early Fellowship—Late Nights and Outside Speakers

It is well documented that Monroe Husbands spoke to a group interested in learning about Unitarianism on Nov. 18, 1955 and that Vincent Richards gave the first sermon on November 30 at the YMCA, topic not known.

But for the first few months of the Fellowship’s existence, who spoke at Sunday meetings, the most general term for the events, and the topics, are not known.

We do know that Sunday services were held regularly after Richards’ inaugural address.

It is also known that the. Rev. Jacob Trapp, the long-time minister of the Community Church in Summit (now Beacon UU) was probably ordained Unitarian minister who spoke most often in the early days when the Fellowship did not have his own minister. The other local Unitarian ministers who were called in were Norman Fletcher, minister of the Unity Unitarian Church in Montclair and the Phillips Endicott Osgood from the South Orange Unitarian Church.

However, we have a better idea of when Trapp conducted services than about his subjects.

Trapp is first known to have spoken at the Morristown YMCA on Sunday, November 13, at 8:30 pm. as the Fellowship service was shown under the Community Church listing on the prior Thursday’s Madison Eagle and it is logical Trapp probably used the theme he was scheduled to give that Sunday morning in Summit “Three Bible Heroes”. Similarly, Summit’s December 9 listing showed the Fellowship as having an 8:30 pm service and Trapp could have used his Sunday morning topic, the “Negro Spiritual in America”.

Morristown also is shown in the Summit schedule in the Madison Eagle of November 24 presumably meaning Trapp was going to speak on Sunday November 27.

However, there’s one thing wrong with that—an article in the same edition said Dr. Dale DeWitt, the regional director for the American Unitarian Association about speak on the topic “A Religion of One’s Own”, which was a standard theme DeWitt used over several years.

The first surviving order of service is short on facts—it did not give the topic, name of the speaker or the date. However, a handwritten note shows DeWitt was indeed the speaker, although the writer listed the date as November 28, which was a Monday.

One more topic is known for 1955—the Fellowship was to hear the Rev. Fletcher discuss the play “The Diary of Anne Frank” on Sunday, December 4, then being presented in New York City.

Beyond that, we know more about the business elements of two Sunday meetings, as they were called. No topic was given but the Fellowship reported in the Daily Record that it would be working on by laws on Sunday December 11. On December 18, there was a brief musical program, but most of the attention in a newspaper article was given to the plan to discuss the by-laws, which were approved that night.