Robert Atherton Bakeman (August 16, 1879 – September 29, 1950) was an American clergyman and socialist activist who served as mayor of Peabody, Massachusetts.
[3] On October 28, 1905, he accepted a call from the Baptist church in East Jaffrey, New Hampshire and became its pastor on November 5, 1905.
At the following year's conference he attempted to introduce a resolution declaring the Baptist denomination to be against such gifts but the presiding officer refused to receive it.
[5] His socialist beliefs caused his more conservative parishioners to leave the church and Bakeman worked as a weaver in a Fitchburg, Massachusetts mill on weekdays to help make ends meet.
[2] In 1912, Bakeman became an associate pastor under George R. Lunn at the United People's Church of Schenectady, New York.
He read gas meters and sold fire insurance until 1917, when he left Adams for a teaching position in Hinckley, Maine.
[2] After the war, Bakeman settled in Peabody, Massachusetts, where he became pastor of the Second Congregational Church and taught an Americanization class in the public schools.
[16] After socialist leader Alfred Baker Lewis was arrested at a rally for Sacco and Vanzetti in Peabody, Bakeman dismissed the city's acting police chief, arranged for the charges to be dismissed, and led a second rally three days later that was attended by 10,000 people.
[1] On February 10, 1931, he was one of twelve people arrested when the Boston Police Department broke up an unpermitted meeting of the Trade Union Unity League at the Parkman Bandstand.