NEW WEBSITE COMING SOON!
In the meantime enjoy some pictures from our gorgeous
weekend, the dedication of the bell, the parade...
Some Photos from Religious Education
The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Beaufort is a loving community. We support each other in our search for spiritual, emotional, and intellectual growth.
We embrace the seven Principles and Purposes of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations and speak about them confidently to the broader community so they may know who we are and what we hold true. We are led by the Rev. Nan L. White. Our services are varied in content, form and leadership. We welcome everyone.
With the exception of summer Sundays, we provide religious education for all children during the worship hour and invite members and visitors to stay for coffee, cookies, and conversation after the service.
How to Find Us:
We meet at the Wardle YMCA, 1801 Richmond Avenue, Port Royal, South Carolina most Sundays at 10:00 am. The YMCA is located in Port Royal, one block south of Ribaut Road (Hwy 802). If approaching from the town of Beaufort, follow Ribaut Road southbound for .7 mile beyond the traffic signal at the left turn to the McTeer Bridge to Lady's Island. Richmond Avenue will be on the left, opposite Friendly's Restaurant. If approaching from the south on Hwy 802, Richmond Avenue is the next right turn after Paris Avenue, the main access road to the town of Port Royal.
Click here for map 
Plain Text November Newsletter is included below
About Laura Towne
Laura Matilda Towne was born in 1825 in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. While supported by her parents, she was well educated as a homeopath. Alongside her family, Towne was member of the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia where her social conscience was stirred by the anti-slavery sermons of William Henry Furness calling for abolition.
In 1861 the Union Navy captured Port Royal Sound, surprising the cotton growers of the Sea Islands and causing them to leave not only their plantations but also their slaves.
Although now freed slaves they were far from being prepared to begin a free life.
This set the stage for Laura Matilda Towne’s life work.
The Port Royal Experiment, where Northern teachers, superintendents, and missionaries from various churches were called to the sea islands to help the former slaves create free lives, Towne was one of the first to respond to the call.
In 1862 Laura Towne met Ellen Murray when she spoke to a large Quaker Colony in Rhode Island where Ellen Murray resided, as a compassionate and personally interested teacher. Soon thereafter, Laura Town, at the age of 36, came to St. Helena Island
followed by Ellen Murray who became her life long companion. Confronting them were nearly insurmountable obstacles: resentful Union troops, an inhospitable climate, threatening insects, and devastating epidemics. Nevertheless, a multi-talented woman, Towne described the work as “noble:. Her homeopathic efforts were heroic. She and Murray began holding classes where teaching became their major activity. The first class was held at The Oaks and because of the shear numbers of students they soon were held at Brick Baptist Church until the Commission of Philadelphia offered a new school house that was shipped in sections in 1864.
Laura Towne named the school- Penn-in honor of William Penn and the Pennsylvania’s Freedman’s Aid Society who funded the school’s first years. Later her family and other prominent Unitarians and abolitionists of other faiths supported the school. Penn became the only school in South Carolina to provide secondary education to freed men and women, and eventually teacher training was offered.
It was also unique in that Towne and Murray’s friend and co-founder Charlotte Forten,
a free woman from the north, became an important African American teacher, as racial distinctions did not impede Towne and Murray’s work or pleasure. They regularly welcomed African American teachers into their home.
Laura Towne became a bridge between the government and the people of the islands,
often as an advocate for their needs and wages. She opposed speculators’ attempts
to buy lands that had become delinquent through nonpayment of taxes, eventually making it possible for people to own the land they had worked on all their lives.
Towne was a quiet revolutionary who broke social barriers; attacked the assigned social place of African Americans by breaking entrenched patterns of subservience, and enabling black people to develop independence, responsibility and leadership.
Laura Towne died of influenza in 1901 at the age of 75. Several hundred of her sea island neighbors followed the simple mule cart that carried her body to the Port Royal ferry,
singing the spirituals she had so loved. She is buried in Philadelphia.
Ellen Murray died of yellow fever in 1908 at the Oaks Plantation where they both
had lived. The people of St. Helena Island erected a monument in Ellen Murray’s honor in 1908. Later Laura Towne’s brother placed a stone water trough for horses, across the street, with the inscription:
“In memory of Laura M. Towne 1825-1901 She devoted thirty-eight years of her life to the colored people of St. Helena Island and employed her means in their education and care”
And here a memorial for her in Brick Baptist Church cemetery,
inscribed “Erected by the people of St. Helena, S.C. in memory of Laura M. Towne
entered into joy in 1901 their beloved and venerated teacher, friend, helper and Physician for 40 years. ‘Let light perpetual shine on her’”
Laura Towne didn’t have time to right an autobiography but she kept a journal for a number of years and wrote to her family in the north, so that the record of her work
has neither been forgotten or lost, but stands as a lesson of self-devotion to a noble cause.
Her Unitarian understanding of the importance of social justice brought her here and
living out her faith and the love for the people is what that kept her here
until her dying days.