FROTHINGHAM, OCTAVIUS BROOKS American clergyman and author, was born in Boston (Mass.), Nov. 26, 182 2. His graduation from Harvard college in 1843 and from the Divinity school in was followed by pastorates at Unitarian churches in Salem, Jersey City, and New York city until ill-health compelled his resignation in 1879. In he returned to Boston, where he died on Nov. 27, 1895. To this later period of his life belongs his best literary work, although he re mained a greater orator than he was a man of letters. Always on the unpopular side, he was not only an anti-slavery leader when abolition was not popular even in New England, and a radical and rationalist when it was impossible for him to stay conven iently in the Unitarian church, but he was the first president of the National Free Religious Association (1867) and an early and ardent disciple of Darwin and Spencer.
His works include Stories from the Life of the Teacher (1863), A Child's Book of Religion (i866), Life of Theodore Parker (1874), The Cradle of the Christ (1877), The Spirit of New Faith (1877), Transcendentalism in New England (1876) , George Ripley (1882) , Memoir of William Henry Channing (i886) , Boston Unitarian ism, 1820-50 (189o) (really a biography of his father), and Recollec tions and Impressions 1822-90 (1891) .