The Connecticut labor news., 1921-11-25
FIRST WOMAN TO BE ORDAINED PREACHER SAW MANY CHANGES
Had to Fight College Authorities to Study Divinity
 Course

Tremendous change in the social life of the country were witnessed by Rev, Dr. Antoinette Louisa Brown Blackwell, the first woman minister to be ordained in the United States and the last survivor of the woman suffrage group that fol- lowed the leadership of Susan B. Anth- ony, who died the other day in Eliza beth, N J. Her death was reported, III the Labor News last week.
 Mrs Blackwell was born in a log cabin in Henrietta, N. Y., in 1925. She was the child of parents who were deeply religious, her father having become a farmer only because circumstances stood in the way of his studying for the min istry. At the age of 9 she was an active church worker and at 10 had announced her intention of fitting herself for the pulpit
 She was a student in Monroe County Academy then and was teaching school out of class hours for $l a week, and ever realize her ambition of being a minister. Even her parents discour- aged the idea, and there were then prac- tically no schools of divinity open to women in this country. But the young girl had figured the course she meant to pursue very accurately, and two years later, having entered Oberlin College as a junior and completed its undergraduate course with honors, she presented her self for matriculation at its school of divinity.
 The college authorities refused until she pointed out to them with llnanswer- bIe accuracy that the character of the institution provided that no student could be refused admission to the divinity course on account of her sex. Upon her graduation as a minister she became pastor of the Congregational Church in South Butler, N. Y. In 1855 she entered the ministry of the Unitarian Church, but at the approach of the Civil War re- signed in order to devote all her time to featuring against slavery
 In company with Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Aaron Powell and Neal Dow she devoted herself to this work until the emancipation proc lamation ended slavery. Then she used her lecturers gifts and the following she had gained to help the causes of temperance and suffrage.
 She was one of the company of wom- en, which included Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Julia Ward Shaw, who worked necessarily for the cause of women's right during the last half of the 18th century. In her later years, after all the causes to which she had devoted her life had been won, or as good as won, she gave up featuring and preaching and devoted herself to writing.
 As an author she wrote mostly on re- 1igous and philosophical subjects, but pub lished several novels also of which one "The Island Life" had a wide sale for a number of years. Her principal other books were studies .in General Science, , "The Sexes Throughout Nature" and "The Physical Basis of Immortality
 She was married in 1855 to Samuel Blackwell of Cincinnati the brother of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to be licensed as physician in this courl- try They had six children. MT. Black well died i'll 1895, and after his death Mrs. Blackwell made her home in Eliza beth, N. J., with one of her daughters.