Stanton Coit

Stanton George Coit (11 August 1857 – 15 February 1944) was an American-born leader of the Ethical movement in England. He became a British citizen in 1903.

Biography

Stanton Coit was born in Columbus, Ohio, on 11 August 1857. He studied at Amherst College where he "fell under the spell of Emerson", at Columbia University, and at the Humboldt University of Berlin, where he studied under Georg von Gizycki and took the degree of Dr. phil. in 1885.

Coit was an aide to Felix Adler in the Society for Ethical Culture which Adler founded in 1876, and it was Adler's suggestion that he study for a doctorate.

In 1886, he founded the Neighborhood Guild, a settlement house in New York City's Lower East Side which is now known as the University Settlement House, following three months spent at Toynbee Hall, which gave him the idea.

In 1888, he went to London as minister of the South Place Religious Society, and during his ministry it was renamed the South Place Ethical Society (SPES) at his insistence. He settled in the United Kingdom, later taking British citizenship.

In 1896, he founded the Union of Ethical Societies, later the Ethical Union, later British Humanist Association, now known as Humanists UK.

In 1898, Coit married Fanny Adela Wetzlar, daughter of a German industrialist Fritz von Gans, who predeceased him in 1932. It was Adela's money which purchased the former Methodist Chapel in Queen's Road. They had three daughters (Adela, Gwendolen and Virginia, his wife had three children from her previous marriage: Richard, Margaret and Elizabeth,). Virginia assisted her father at the Ethical Church.