Dall, C. H. A. (Charles Henry Appleton), 1816-1886

Charles Henry Appleton Dall (1816-1886) graduated from Harvard College in 1837 and Harvard Divinity School in 1840 and was then ordained to the Unitarian ministry. He was sent to St. Louis where he organized the first free school for the poor located west of the Mississippi River. Rev. Dall served Unitarian parishes in Maryland, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Ontario, Canada, until 1855 when he became the first foreign missionary of the Unitarian Church in America. Rev. Dall's missionary work took him to Calcutta, India, where he established five schools and worked with Hindu social and cultural reformers. In September, 1844, he married the former Caroline Healey Wells, who later became a prolific feminist polemicist. A son and a daughter resulted from this marriage. His son, William Healey Dall, became a noted conchologist. Dall arrived in India in 1855 and rarely returned home between his arrival and his 1886 death in Calcutta.