Edward Chipman Guild papers

Edward Chipman Guild, son of Benjamin Guild and Eliza Eliot, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts on February 29, 1832. The Guild family attended the Federal Street Church of Boston, a Unitarian church of William Ellery Channing, the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States and one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. Attendee of the Andover Theological Seminary and an 1857 graduate of the Harvard Divinity School, Guild was ordained on September 25, 1859.

Guild served as a pastor in Marietta, Ohio (1859-1860); Canton, Massachusetts (1861-1866); Ithaca, New York (1866-1868); Northboro, Massachusetts (1868-1869); Baltimore, Maryland (1869-1871); and Waltham, Massachusetts (1873-1880), where he gave a lecture series on Lyrical Poetry at the Lowell Institute. Resettling after four years spent in Germany, Guild became pastor at the Unitarian Church in Brunswick, Maine for nearly ten years (1884-1893).

A lecturer on English and American literature, Guild preseted Sunday evening lectures at Bowdoin College and occasionally taught in the English Department. His scholarly interests ranged from literature and poetry to Icelandic languages. Guild was held in high esteem in Brunswick and was honored by the Pejepscot Historical Society and the Bowdoin College Library. Guild was called to preach in Pembroke (1895-1896), Barnstable (1898-1899), and finally in Pittsfield, Massachusetts until his death on November 6, 1899.