Caroline Augusta Soule papers

1875-1916 [bulk 1875-1903]

Caroline A. Soule, author and Universalist churchwoman, missionary, and preacher, was born in Albany, New York in 1824. She married Henry Birdsall Soule, a Universalist minister, in 1843, and the family moved from town to town in Connecticut and Massachusetts following Henry Soule's preaching career. When Soule died in 1852, Caroline A. Soule took over the support of her five young children by teaching and writing. She contributed articles to Universalist magazines and wrote stories, novels, and a biography of her husband. From 1856-1865 Soule was an editor for the Ladies Repository, a Universalist magazine.

In 1869 Soule helped found the Woman's Centenary Association (originally called the Woman's Centenary Aid Association), a Universalist organization whose purpose was to aid disabled preachers and their families, assist women studying for the ministry, and do missionary work in the United States and abroad. Soule served as president until 1880. Soule was also active in the temperance movement, and in Sorosis, the women's club.

In 1875 Soule went on a trip to England and Scotland to recover her health, and met a group of Universalists in Scotland. She returned to Scotland in 1878 as a missionary for the Woman's Centenary Association. In 1879 she founded St. Paul's Universalist Church in Glasgow and became its Pastor, and in 1880 she was ordained. Soule remained in Scotland for the rest of her life except for a period, 1882-1886, when she returned to the United States to work for the Woman's Centenary Association. She died in Glasgow in 1903.