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 ~
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.