Brownson (Orestes) is born in Stockbridge, Vermont.

Orestes Brownson becomes a teacher and preacher. He arrives in Boston in 1832 and becomes leader of the new Society for Christian Union and Progress, and a charter member of the Transcendental Club. A social critic and contributor to The Dial, Brownson publishes his journals in 1837* and 1844.* Religiously restless, he moved from the Congregational to the Presbyterian, Universalist, Unitarian, and finally the Catholic Church, but deplored secularization and “political atheism.” Thomas O’Connor subsequently calls Brownson “Too Protestant for the Catholics, and too Catholic for the Protestants.” He dies in Detroit, Michigan, on April 17, 1876.