Church on Meeting Street is now the site of the Circular Congregational Church.) The new congregation was chartered as the Second Independent Church of Charleston in 1817. As Forster succumbed to an old Army illness in 1819, Samuel Gilman, a graduate of Harvard College and an “avowed Unitarian”, was hired to complete the slow transition to Unitarianism. While at Harvard, Gilman wrote Harvard’s alma mater, Fair Harvard. Gilman’s wife, Caroline Howard Gilman, was a well-known author and poet. She was inspired by Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts, to create the churchyard next to the church in the 1830s with beautiful plants and objects; a place to be used by the living. Samuel Gillman remained the minister of the church until his death in 1858. During his tenure, he was known as a fine speaker and grew the congregation substantially. Ralph Waldo Emerson also spoke at the church on two different occasions in 1823. The church was chartered as the Unitarian Church in Charleston when it joined the American Unitarian Association in 1839. Renovation in the English Perpendicular Gothic Revival style Francis D. Lee, a Charleston architect and church member, was hired in 1852 to enlarge and remodel the building. Inspired by architecture such as is seen in the Chapel of Henry VII at Westminster Abbey and St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, Lee completed the project two years later in partnership with Edward C, Jones, a local architect with more experience then Lee. Lee was only 26 years old at the time with only one statue on his resume, Jones was 28 years old but had been in construction since he was 15 years of age. The project involved raising the entire roof of the building four feet, adding a Chancel, and constructing false flying buttresses to provide the proportions and looks of a Gothic building. In addition, the tower was raised and was built to include an office for the minister. The fan-vaulted ceiling, nave, and chancel closely resembled their English prototypes; the stained glass windows were considered among the finest in the country. The church may have been the first building of Gothic architecture built in the United States. The style is referred to as English Perpendicular Gothic Revival. The large Chancel window was manufactured by the Henry E. Sharp glass works of Brooklyn, New York in 1854. The two side windows in the Chancel are also by