Part of an integrated online collection of primary documents, secondary reference sources, and journal articles covering all areas of U.S. history from pre-colonial times to the present day. The DAB records the lives of prominent Americans who died by Dec. 31, 1980.

Part of an integrated online collection of primary documents, secondary reference sources, and journal articles covering all areas of U.S. history from pre-colonial times to the present day. The DAB records the lives of prominent Americans who died by Dec. 31, 1980.

The first edition of this award-winning reference, published in 1977, contained 425 biographical profiles of the most significant American religious figures. This new edition includes profiles for 125 additional people, and the earlier biographical sketches have been revised and updated. The volume includes religious leaders who died before July 1, 1992. Among its pages are entries for reformers, philosophers, social activists, doers and dreamers. While many of the people are mainstream, white ordained clergymen, many more stand outside traditional denominations and reflect the cultural and religious diversity of modern America. The result is a systematic overview of 400 years of American religion from the colonial period to the present day. Each profile begins with a capsule summary of the chief events in that person's life. The biographical essay that follows places the basic facts of the figure's life within the larger context of American religious history. A bibliography of the most significant works by and about the figure concludes each entry. Appendices at the end of the work categorize each individual by religious denomination and by place of birth.

Working in isolation on a Connecticut farm, Julia Smith (1792–1886) translated the Bible into English. She was the only woman to translate the entire Bible, but her work has been alternately ignored or disparaged by subsequent biblical scholars. This is in part because no English translation other than the King James Version attracted significant attention until the appearance of the Revised Standard Version in 1952.In With Her Own Eyes, Emily Sampson argues that Smith’s work anticipated trends followed by later, usually male, translators and that she deserves recognition as a pioneering and influential biblical scholar in her own right. Smith was the daughter of a preacher and lawyer and a mother who wrote poetry and studied linguistics, mathematics, and astronomy. When William Miller’s predictions of the end of the world failed, she began translating for herself from the original languages. Trained in Greek and Latin, Smith taught herself Hebrew and ultimately produced five translations. In 1876 Smith published a very literal translation at her own expense. She hoped not only that her Bible would reveal additions made to the King James Version but that her work would help bolster the case that women were, in many respects, the equal of men. Sampson also details Smith’s striking personal history. She and her four sisters were seen as eccentrics in the small town of Glastonbury. They were active in the abolitionist movement in the decades before the Civil War and later in the temperance and women’s suffrage movements. Smith attended the first meeting of the Association of the Advancement of Women, and she and her sister Abby became famous in Connecticut for their refusal to pay taxes until given the right to vote in town meetings.A comprehensive look at the intellectual, social, and political circles of Julia Smith, With Her Own Eyes is a singular portrait of one of the most remarkable autodidacts in the history of American intellectual life.