Ordained!

I promised in my previous post of Pioneering Women of Civil War America (Seventh Installment) about Doctors Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell and Lydia Folger Fowler that I would feature a woman who was closely connected to the Blackwell sisters. Allow me to introduce you to their sister-in-law:

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921)

In 1851, Antoinette became the first woman in the United States to be ordained in an avowed denomination—as a Protestant minister.

Beforehand, in 1847, after graduating with a Literary Bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College (Ohio), she became the first and only woman to be accepted at Oberlin for theology coursework. Despite this college offering equal education for men and women and people of color from 1835 on, it opposed women engaging in formal theological learning and training. So, Antoinette’s admission came with the stipulation that she not count on receiving an official degree for her studies in this major.

Appallingly Slower Than the Drip of Molasses:

Oberlin College made Antoinette wait thirty-one and sixty-one years before it finally awarded her honorary Master and Doctoral degrees in 1878 and 1908, respectively!

In between college and her licensure as a minister, Antoinette applied her religious faith to help broaden the battles for women’s equal rights and suffrage, temperance, and other social reform when she lectured throughout the United States and Europe and wrote for The North Star, newspaper of famous former slave Frederick Douglass (pictured below). You can learn more about this incredible man here: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/frederick-douglass.

NOTE: In Train to Glory (Book 2 of Glory: A Civil War Series), Frederick Douglass makes a cameo appearance, along with Susan B. Anthony, at one of the lectures of my primary character/Jana Brady in Seneca Falls, New York.

In 1920, at the age of 95, Antoinette became the only woman who was present at the first National Women’s Rights Convention, held in 1850 at Worcester, Massachusetts, to see the passage of the 19^th Amendment to the United States Constitution, whereby women were finally given the right to vote!

Antoinette voted for Republican Warren G. Harding in that year’s presidential election!

So…what in Antoinette’s background encouraged her to break out of the norm and into a role traditionally reserved for men?

She was known to have a gift for words from three years old. I would venture to say that this, along with her family’s devotion to the *Congregational Church, where a teenaged Antoinette preached the Sunday meetings, probably set her compass on course for a career in the pulpit. *(Religious construct which allows each church to govern itself).

Additionally, her husband, Samuel Charles Blackwell (brother to Doctors Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell), supported and encouraged her activities in social reform, including women’s rights.

And, last but not least, she was influenced by her in-depth study of the Bible during her theological studies, which stirred her strong conviction that the Bible’s assertions about women did not apply to the 19^th century, and it was up to her to shout it out and update the world!

I will end on this note with the hopes that you have enjoyed my post and that I have whet your appetite to learn more about Antoinette Brown Blackwell, which you may do at the following places:

Video at my Complimentary Civil War Women Website.

Online at: Western New York Suffragists: Winning the Vote.

Book/Ebook: Antoinette Brown Blackwell authored many of her own books, and you can find them at www.Amazon.com.

Stay Tuned for the Next Installment of Pioneering Women of Civil War America. . .

. . .Featuring a Woman Well Known to the World, But Perhaps Unknown For Some of Her Pioneering Deeds!