John Relly Beard

John Relly Beard was an English Unitarian minister, schoolmaster, university lecturer, and translator who co-founded Unitarian College Manchester and wrote more than thirty books.

He was born in Portsmouth on 4 August 1800, the first child of a tradesman, John Beard, and his wife Ann Paine. After attending Portsmouth Grammar School and a brief period in a French boarding-school, he joined Manchester College, York in 1820 and studied under Charles Wellbeloved, a pioneering translator of the Old Testament. One of his fellow students there was William Gaskell (whose wife Elizabeth became the famous novelist) and they remained lifelong friends.

After his training Beard became a Unitarian minister at Greengate, Salford in 1825. Alongside his ministry, he ran a school which was so successful that he built a house to accommodate it. Although he closed it in 1849 to give his attention to other matters, he remained deeply interested in education. In 1842 his congregation migrated to Bridge Street, Strangeways, Manchester, and Beard remained their minister until 1864, when he moved to Sale, Cheshire.

During this time he and William Gaskell, who was living in nearby Knutsford, worked to establish the Unitarian Home Missionary Board, which became Unitarian College Manchester, of which they were the co-founders and the first two Principals.

He retired in 1874 and died aged 76 on 22 November 1876, at the Meadows, Ashton upon Mersey.