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Part of the American
History & Genealogy Project |
Women as Ministers
Mary Garard Andrews
1952 ~ 1936
Mrs. Andrews was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia, March 3,
1952. Is a Universalist minister. Left to struggle with the
adverse elements she developed a strong character and overcame
many difficulties and acquired such education as she had wished.
In Hillsdale College she completed the English Theological
course, and during this time she had charge of two churches,
preaching twice every Sunday for three years. For five years she
was in charge of the Free Baptist Church, but she severed her
connection with this faith and united with the Universalist
Church. She has been a close student and active worker. Since
her marriage she has made Omaha her home.
Antoinette Brown Blackwell
1835 ~ 1921
Mrs. Blackwell was born in Henrietta, Monroe County, New York,
May 20, 1835. Daughter of Joseph Brown, of Thompson, Connecticut
and Abby Morse, of Dudley, Massachusetts. Her ancestors belonged
to the early English colonists of New England. When but sixteen
years of age, she taught school in order to pay for a collegiate
course. She was a graduate of Oberlin College. In 18148 she
published her first essay in the Oberlin Quarterly Review, After
she had completed her theological course, she found she could
not obtain a license, but she preached wherever an opportunity
offered, and gradually all obstacles melted away, and in 1852,
she became an ordained pastor of the Congregational Church in
South Butler, Wayne County, New York. In 1856 she married Samuel
C. Blackwell. Her life as a preacher, lecturer and writer has
been a busy and useful one. She is the author of "Studies in
General Science," "A Market Woman," "The
Island Neighbors," "The Sexes Throughout Nature"
and "The Physical Basis of Immortality."
Caroline Bartlett Crane
1858
Mrs. Crane was born at Hudson, Wisconsin, August 17, 1858.
Daughter of Lorenzo D. and Julia A. Bartlett. She married Dr.
Augustus Warren Crane m 1896. Was first a teacher and newspaper
writer and editor, then became a minister, her first charge
being All Souls' Church, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, which she
held for three years. She organized the new creedless
institution, the "People's Church," but resigned her
pastorate in 1889. Has since been engaged in social and sanitary
surveys of cities, but has also found time to lecture, teach and
preach.
Martha Waldron Janes
1832 ~ 1913
Mrs. Martha Waldron Janes was born in Northfield, Michigan, in
June; 1832. Her father, Leonard T. Waldron was a native of
Massachusetts. Her mother, Nancy Bennett, was a native of New
York. She educated herself by doing housework at $1.00 a week.
She was converted when very young; and by her religious zeal and
exhortations became so conspicuous that many considered her
mentally unsound. In October, 1852, she married John A. Sober,
who died November, 1864, leaving her with two young children. In
1867 she married her second husband, H. H. Janes, and though she
had preached for some time from the pulpits of the Free Baptist
Church she was not regularly ordained until 1868, being the
first woman ordained in that conference. She was actively
engaged m the work of women's suffrage and temperance.
Mary C Jones 1842 ~
Mrs. Mary C. Jones was born November 5, 1842, at Sutton, New
Hampshire. Her husband moved to the Pacific Coast in 1867. They
ultimately made their home in Seattle, Washington, where she
preached her first sermon in August, 1880, in the First Baptist
Church of that city. She was recognized as a minister and
supplied the pulpit in the absence of the regular minister. In
1882 she became permanent pastor of the First Baptist Church;
later that of the First Baptist Church of Spokane at that time
the second largest church in the state of Washington. For some
years she has been engaged in evangelical work. Mrs. Jones is
the founder of the Grace Seminary and School for Girls in
Centralia, Wash. She has been the founder and organizer of
several churches throughout the state and has splendid work for
religion in this new country.
Florence E. Kollock
1848 ~ 1925
Miss Florence E. Kollock was born January 19, 1848, in Waukesha,
Wisconsin. Daughter of William E. Kollock and Anne Margaret
Hunter Kollock. Her first work was in the missionary field at
Waverley, Iowa, in 1875. Later, she removed to Blue Island,
Illinois, then to Englewood, where she has since made her home.
Her first congregation was in Englewood. There meetings were
held in the Masonic Hall until through the efforts of Miss
Kollock a church was built. She is recognized as a woman of
great ability as an organizer in various branches of church
work. She is the possessor of wonderful personal magnetism. In
her preaching she has gathered about her a large circle. During
one of her vacations she established a church in Pasadena
California, which is now the largest Universalist Church on the
Pacific Coast She is prominent in all reformatory and
educational work, the woman's suffrage and temperance movements.
Mary Lydia Leggett 1852
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Miss Mary Lydia Leggett was born April 25, 1852, in Sempronius,
New York. Daughter of the Rev. William Leggett and Freelove
Frost Leggett In 1887 she was ordained in the Liberal Ministry
in Kansas City, Missouri. She built and dedicated a church in
Beatrice, Nebraska, of which she was the minister until 1891,
when she became pastor of a church near Boston. This church in
Green Harbor, Massachusetts, was founded by the granddaughter of
the statesman, Daniel Webster, whose summer home was in this
quaint little town on the old Plymouth shores. Miss Leggett has
in her study the office table on which the great orator wrote
his famous speeches.
Marian Murdoch 1849
Was born October 9, 1849, in Garnaville, Iowa, and is one of the
successful ministers of that state. Her father, Judge Samuel
Murdoch, was a member of the territorial legislature of Iowa,
also of the state legislature, a judge of the District Court and
is well known throughout the state. She was educated in the
Northwest Ladies' College, at Evanston, Illinois, and the
University of Wisconsin. On deciding to take up the ministry she
entered the School of Liberal Theology in Meadville,
Pennsylvania, in 1882, receiving her degree of D.D. in 1885. Her
work in the ministry began while she was yet a pupil. After
completing her course, she was called to the Unity Church of
Humbolt, Iowa, and later to the First Unitarian Church in
Kalamazoo, Michigan. Later she took a course of lectures at
Oxford England. Miss Murdoch is essentially a reformer,
preaching on questions of social, political and moral reform.
Esther Tuttle Pritchard
1840 ~ 1905
Born January 26, 1840, in Morrow County, Ohio. Her father,
Daniel Wood, was a minister. Her husband, Lucius V. Tuttle, was
a volunteer in the Civil War, and died in 1881. In 1884 Mrs.
Tuttle was chosen by the Woman's Foreign Missionary Board to
edit the Friends' Missionary Advocate, which was published in
Chicago. Here she married Calvin W. Pritchard, editor of the
Christian Worker, and became proprietor of the Missionary
Advocate, which, in 1890 she presented to the Woman's Foreign
Missionary Union of Friends. She was well known as a teacher of
the English Bible in the Chicago Training School for the City,
Home and Foreign Missions, and as superintendent of the
Systematic giving Department of the National Woman's Christian
Temperance Union.
Anna Weed Prosser 1846
~ 1902
Born October 15, 1846. An invalid for many years, she believed
her recovery due to prayer, and immediately entered upon her
evangelical work in gratitude for her restored health. She
worked for some time under the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union, ultimately establishing a mission of her own, known as
the Old Canal Street Mission, in Buffalo, of which she took
charge and was assisted in this work by reformed men whom she
had saved from lives of sin. After ten years spent in ministry
among the poor and unfortunate class she entered the general
evangelical work and became president of the Buffalo Branch of
the National Christian Alliance.
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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