The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1904-03-02
THREE PIONEER woMEN.
sisters Who Entered Professions whe
t.Do So was rnnonuIar.


Sisters Who Entered Professions When
ts Do So Was Unpopular
1t has been so long since women kept
silence in the ehurches-three OF them
recently speaking in as many different
pulpits in Chicago on one Sunday with
out the fact attracting much attention
that We forget hat. paradoxieally, it
has been in another sense so short
time. Still living to-day is the first wo-
man clergyman TO be formally Or
Gained in this country. and her ordina-
ton dates back only half a century.
Mrs. Antoinette l. Brown Blackwell be-
longs, by marriage. to a family whose
name is associated with every reform
movement which aims 10 give to woman
the large initial.
1t was as the Rev. Antoinette Brown.
however, she first became known to
fame for her brilliant oratorieaI powers.
AS a child of less than sixteen years
Miss Brown began teaching in the pub
lie schools to obtain the coveted and
then terribly discussed higher educa-
ton" Before her graduation from
Oberlin college she had gained repu-
tation as a speaker on anti-slavery,
temperance, woman suffrage and other
subjects equally startling to the con-
sentative minds of the middle of the
last century.
But her heart turned toward the pull
pit, from which men who had passed
theological examinations less credita-
bly, than she Numbered ST. Paul at her.
Despite them and ST. Paul, she contin-
ued to preach, as well as to lecture, for
four years, until, in 1852. she found a
council brave enough to ordain her
that called by the First Congregational
church at South Butler, n. Y.
A Methodist clergyman preached the
ordination sermon, beginning with the
solemn statement that 1.-THE setting
apart of female to the work of the
Christian ministry is, to say the least
novel transaction in this land and age.
She had already been preaching in the
South Butler church a year before re-
ceiving her license. Her pastorate
there lasted but a few years, however.
i'll health, change in religious faith
and marriage to Samuel c. Blackwell,
of New York all contributing to sever
the connection. Though of late years
she has taken charge of no specific
church, Mrs. Blackwell has often ap-
peared in Unitarian pulpits (she having
transferred her adherence to that
church) and was among those who read
a paper at the Chicago parliament Of
religions ten years ago. When it is ad-
ded that in addition to participating ac-
lively in the woman suffrage and other
social movements Mrs. Blackwell has
written five books and brought up an
exactly corresponding number of chill
dren, it may be seen that in resigning
pastoral duties she by no means gave
up trying to make the world better
Born in 1925, the Rev. Mrs. Blackwell
is one of the three living grand old
women" of that name who are identified
with women's progress. The two 9TH
ers, her sisters-in-law, Elizabeth Black
well, born in 1921, and Emily Blackwell,
born in 1926, were pioneer women ply
sicians. Together, under difficulties inn
possible for the twentieth century mind
to guess at, they established the New
York Infirnary for Women and Chill
dren, the first wonlan's hospital in the
country, to which later they attached