THOMAS STARR KING

Thomas Starr King, (December 17, ——, ) was a  minister, influential in  politics during the .
Thomas Starr King, "the orator who saved the nation", was born , , in . The sole support of his family at age 15, he was forced to leave school. Inspired by men like  and , King embarked on a program of self-study for the ministry. At the age of 20 he took over his father's former pulpit at the First Unitarian Church of , .
In 1848 he was appointed pastor of the  in , where he became one of the most famous preachers in . He vacationed in the  of  and in  published a book about the area entitled . In  he accepted a call from the First Unitarian Church of , . During the Civil War, he spoke zealously in favor of the  and was credited by  with saving California from becoming a separate republic. In addition, he organized the Pacific Branch of the , which cared for wounded soldiers and was the predecessor to the .
A fiery orator, he raised over $1.5 million for the Sanitary Commission headquarters in , one-fifth of the total contributions from all the states in the Union. The relentless lecture circuit exhausted him, and he died in San Francisco on , , of .
Mountain peaks in the  (, elevation 1,191 m (3,907 feet) and in  are named in his honor. In  he was voted one of California's two greatest heroes and funds were appropriated for a statue. In  the state of California donated a bronze statue of King to the . In 1941 the Starr King School for the Ministry (Unitarian Universalist), in Berkeley, California, was also renamed in his honor. King's church and tomb in San Francisco are designated historical monuments, and two streets in the city (Starr King Way, on which the church is located, and King Street in the Mission Bay neighborhood) are named for him. There is also a statue of him in , facing JFK Drive, quite close to the .