Sumner Ellis

Sumner Ellis (1828-1886) was an American Universalist minister who prepared for the ministry as one of the theological students trained privately by Hosea Ballou 2d. He preached in Massachusetts—a discourse he delivered to the First Universalist Society in Brighton was published in 1859—and received the degree of Doctor of Divinity. He is chiefly remembered for his Life of Edwin H. Chapin, D.D. (1882), the only full-length biography of the celebrated New York Universalist preacher, issued by the Universalist Publishing House in Boston.

Edwin Hubbell Chapin was the most famous preacher American Universalism ever produced — for thirty years the voice of New York's Fourth Universalist Society, ranked in his day with Henry Ward Beecher among the great pulpit orators, and a force in the temperance and social-reform movements. Ellis's biography, written soon after Chapin's death in 1880, traces his rise from obscurity and preserves generous extracts from his celebrated sermons and lectures.

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