Recently, I used something written by Rev. Elizabeth Tarbox as a reading in a Sunday service. I realized I knew next to nothing about her, so I decided to look up her obituary in the Unitarian, Universalist, and UU Yearbooks (now digitized and online). She died in October, 1999, which means her obituary would be in the following year’s Yearbook — except that was the one year when the UUA decided not to publish minister’s obituaries in the Yearbook. I found no other obituary or life summary for her online.
With a little bit of research, I was able to generate the timeline below — which tells me most of what I want to know:
- 5 March 1944, born Elizabeth Irene Peck to William and Irene Hard Peck in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom (birth record)
- 1963, married Charles E. Tarbox (1938-2016) in St. Albans; she and Charles later had a child (marriage record; Charles Tarbox obituary in Boston Globe)
- 1968, she and Charles immigrated to the United States; applied for Social Security card (Social Security records; Charles Tarbox obituary in Boston Globe)
- 1986, B.A. in philosophy, Bridgewater State College (Bridgewater State yearbook for 1986)
- c. 1980s, congregant at First Parish Duxbury, Mass. (mentioned in FP Duxbury newsletter)
- c. 1986, began studying at Harvard Divinity School
- c. 1988-90, served as student minister, First Parish Norwell, Mass. (mentioned on FP Norwell Facebook page)
- 1990, graduated Harvard Divinity School (UUA Yearbooks)
- 1990, ordained (UUA Yearbooks)
- 1990, settled at First UU Society of Middleboro, Mass. (UUA Yearbooks)
- 1993, publication of Life Tides: Meditations
- 1997, settled at First Parish in Cohasset, Mass. (UUA Yearbooks)
- 1997, publication of Evening Tide: Meditations
- 1999, resigned from First Parish in Cohasset due to ill health (First Parish Cohasset records)
- 31 Oct. 1999, died in Duxbury (Duxbury Annual Report; Social Security records)
I’m mostly satisfied with this timeline, though I wouldn’t mind finding answers to a couple of questions. First: When did she become a Unitarian? — it’s even possible she was raised Unitarian, as there was a small Unitarian fellowship in St. Albans in the 1950s, according to Alan R. Ruston, Unitarianism in Hertfordshire (Watford, Hertfordshire, U.K., 1979), p. 26. Second: What was she doing between marriage in 1963 and starting college in the 1980s — which includes a subsidiary question: Why did she come to the United States?
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