Charles Fletcher Dole

Charles Fletcher Dole was a Unitarian minister, speaker, and writer in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, Massachusetts, and Chairman of the Association to Abolish War. Dole authored of a substantial number of books on politics, history and theology.

Dole was born May 17, 1845 in Brewer, Maine. He was the son of Reverend Nathan Dole (1811–1855) and Caroline Fletcher Dole (1817–1914), and the older brother of Nathan Haskell Dole (1852–1935). He received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in 1868 and a Masters of Arts in 1870. He graduated from Andover Theology Seminary in 1872, and married Frances Drummond of Springfield, MA, on March 4, 1873. He was a professor of Greek at the University of Vermont in 1873, a minister at Plymouth Church in Portland, ME from 1874–6. He was a member of the American Peace Society, the Anti-Imperialist League, 20th Century, Appalachian, etc. Charles got a Doctorate in Divinity from Bowdoin College in 1906.

Charles Fletcher Dole became an influential Unitarian Minister, serving 40 years as pastor of the First Congregational Church of Jamaica Plain beginning in 1876.

His son James Drummond Dole moved to the Territory of Hawaii in 1899 to establish a pineapple-growing empire which would eventually become the Dole Food Company. He lived with cousin Sanford Ballard Dole (1844–1926) who was territorial governor. Dole himself moved to Hawaii in 1909 (where he was welcomed by the conservative community despite his progressive views), and died there in 1927.