Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Mayo, Amory Dwight

MAYO, Amory Dwight, clergyman, b. in Warwick, Mass., 31 Jan., 1823. He was in Amherst college in 1843-'4, but was obliged to leave on account of failing health, and, after studying theology under Hosea Ballou, was pastor of the Independent Christian church at Gloucester, Mass., in 1846-'54, of a church in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1854-'6, and then of Unitarian churches in Albany, N. Y., Cincinnati, Ohio, and Springfield, Mass., till 1879, since which time he has been engaged in educational work in the southern states. He served for fifteen years as a member of the boards of education in Cincinnati and Springfield, and has been a strong advocate of the use of the Bible in the public schools, and of the proposed “Christian amendment” to the U. S. constitution. He has for many years delivered an annual course of lectures in the Meadville, Pa., theological school, in which he held the chair of ecclesiastical polity. Mr. Mayo was for six years associate editor of the “National Journal of Education” in Boston. He has contributed largely to periodicals, and published “The Balance” (Boston, 1847); “Graces and Powers of the Christian Life” (1850); “Symbols of the Capital,” discourses on Christian civilization (New York, 1859); “Religion in Common Schools” (Cincinnati, 1869); and “Talks with Teachers” (1878). He also edited a volume of selections from his wife's writings, with a memoir (Boston, 1849), — His wife, Sarah Carter Edgarton, author, b. in Shirley, Mass., 17 March, 1819; d. in Gloucester, Mass., 9 July, 1848, began to contribute to journals at the age of seventeen. She edited “The Rose of Sharon,” an annual, from 1840 till her death, and for several years conducted “The Ladies' Repository,” a monthly magazine in Boston. She married Mr. Mayo in 1846. Mrs. Mayo published between 1836 and 1844 “The Palfreys,” “Ellen Clifford,” and “Memoirs of Mrs. Julia W. Scott,” and compiled “The Poetry of Women,” “The Flower Vase,” “Spring Flowers,” “The Floral Fortune-Teller,” and “Fables of Flora.”