Someone from
Pocatello, Idaho sent me the following information about a woman ordained
10 years earlier. I stand corrected, although this Brown appears to be ordained
by a single church rather than a denomination. Olympia Brown
also obtained the seminary degree as well.
Antoinette Louisa Brown, later Antoinette Brown Blackwell (May 20, 1825--November
5, 1921), was the first woman to be ordained as a minister in the United States.
She was a well-versed public speaker on the paramount issues of her time, and
distinguished herself from her contemporaries with her use of religious faith in
her efforts to expand women's rights.
Brown was born in Henrietta, New York, the daughter of Joseph Brown and Abby
Morse. After daring to inject a prayer into her family's religious observance,
she was accepted into her family's branch of the Congregational Church at age
nine. She spoke in church in her youth. She studied at the Monroe County Academy
and taught for a few years, but soon decided that God meant for her to become a
minister.
Brown attended Oberlin College, which was a Christian school and the first
coeducational college in the country. As a woman she was not permitted to learn
public speaking or rhetoric, nor was she allowed to speak publicly in her
coeducational courses. She graduated from Oberlin in 1847 and studied at the
Oberlin Seminary until 1850, when she was refused a degree and ordination due to
her gender.
Without a preaching license following graduation, Brown decided to pause her
ministerial ambitions to write for Frederick Douglass' abolitionist paper, The
North Star. She soon spoke at a women's rights convention, giving a speech that
was well-received and served as the beginning of a speaking tour in which she
would address issues such as abolition, temperance, and women's rights.
The Congregational Church of South Butler, New York inducted Brown as minister
on September 15, 1853, making her the first woman ordained minister to a regular
Protestant denomination in the United States. Not long after, she also became
the first woman to officiate a message. She later left the Church due to illness
coupled with discontent with some Congregational ideologies.