The Reverend George Leonard Chaney (December 24, 1836-April 10, 1922), Unitarian minister and church leader, was the son of James and Harriet Webb Chaney of Salem, Massachusetts. He entered Harvard College in 1855 at the age of nineteen and graduated in 1859, at which time he entered the Meadville Theological Seminary, Meadville, Pennsylvania. After his graduation from that institution in 1862, Chaney became minister of the Hollis Street Unitarian Church in Boston. When the Civil War broke out, Chaney left the Hollis Street Church to minister to soldiers at camp hospitals of the United States Sanitary Commission and at the war's conclusion in 1865, he took a year's leave of absence from his church to visit Europe. When Chaney returned to the United States, he again preached at the Hollis Street Church until 1875. At that time he left with his wife, the former Caroline Carter of Leominster, Massachusetts, and young son Carter, for Hawaii to visit Carter relatives, among them Henry A. P. Carter. an advisor to King David Kalakawa. Upon returning from the trip. Chaney published what would be the first of several books. Aloha! (1880), a travel book about the customs and church history of Hawaii; resumed the pastorate at Hollis Street; and began his presidency of Boston's Industrial School Association, a group which introduced woodworking and manual training to school children. In 1877 Chaney resigned as minister of the Hollis Street Church and assumed the charge of the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a charge he kept until 1880.During the decades of the 1880s and 1890s Chaney continued to preach the Gospel and aid education in a number of ways. For example, in 1881, Chaney went to Atlanta where he established the Unitarian Church of Our Father. Mrs. Chaney worked also, alongside her husband, to form a branch of the Women's Alliance. Through Chaney's long partnership with Edward Everett Hale and James Freeman Clarke, he formed the Southern Conference of Unitarian and Other Christian Churches, and in 1889 he accepted an appointment as Southern Superintendent of the American Unitarian Association. As superintendent, he organized and preached to Unitarian churches in New Orleans, Chattanooga, Dallas, Richmond, and other southern cities. Chaney helped establish in 1882 the Southern Unitarian, a monthly religious paper, which he edited for several years. While in the south, he worked to establish a school for industrial education in Atlanta. and aided the Hampton Institute and schools for blacks in Richmond and Charleston. From 1893 to1900 he served on the boards of trustees of Tuskegee Normal Institute and Atlanta University. Chaney spent the remaining years of his life in Salem, Massachusetts.