Born: 20 May 1825, United States
Died: 5 November 1921
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Antoinette Louisa Brown
The following is republished from New Jersey Women’s History, in line with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. It was written by Annabelle Sebastian.
Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921) founded the New Jersey Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869 with her sister-in-law, Lucy Stone, and was the first woman to be ordained as minister in the United States.
In 1847, after having graduated from Oberlin College with her literary degree, she enrolled in their theology course, with the stipulation that she would not receive an official degree from her studies. It was during this time that her feminist theory began to take shape. Blackwell published an article in the Oberlin Quarterly Review that stated that women were allowed to preach the Bible, and that there was no commandment given within the book itself that women could not do so.
After completing her education in theology, Blackwell was determined to become ordained. In 1853, her goal was completed in Butler, New York, and she served as a minister there for around a year. Following that, she traveled throughout the United States, giving lectures on abolitionism, women’s rights, and temperance.
In 1869, after nearly two decades of taking part in the women’s suffrage movement, Blackwell and her sister-in-law, Lucy Stone, founded the New Jersey Woman’s Suffrage Association, where she served as president from 1891 to 1892. In that same year, she helped Stone found the American Woman Suffrage Association. She also acted as the vice-president of the Association for the Advancement of Women (AAW) and the New Jersey State Federation of Women’s Clubs. At the age of 95, Blackwell was one of a few key early New Jersey suffragists who voted in the 1920 presidential election.
In addition to her work in the suffrage movement, she was also a published author. In 1875, she published The Sexes Throughout Nature, where she argued that men and women were equal according to the study of nature. For her scientific contributions, she was elected a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1881.
References:
Cazden, Elizabeth. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, a biography. Old Westbury, N.Y.: The Feminist Press, 1983. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8346944.
Dykeman, Therese Boos. Woman’s Nature in Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921). 2019. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1190011003.
Lasser, Carol, and Marlene Deahl Merrill, eds. Friends and Sisters: Letters between Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, 1846-93. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Lurie, Maxine N., and Marc Mappen. Encyclopedia of New Jersey. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004. https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.rowan.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=124913&site=ehost-live.
Lyons, Courtney. “’Dont DONT D-O-N-T’ to ‘I Do’: Antoinette Brown Blackwell’s Relationship with Marriage.” Ohio History 117 (2010): 108-128.
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. Vol. 2nd ed. Facts on File Library of World Literature. New York: Facts on File, Inc, 2013. https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.rowan.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e900xww&AN=968097&site=ehost-live.
The following is excerpted from Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company.
Antoinette Blackwell, the first woman to be ordained as a minister. Born in a log cabin in Henrietta, New York, she celebrated her eighty-seventh birthday in 1912, and was then engaged in preaching once a month at All Souls’ Church, Elizabeth, N.J.
After graduating from Oberlin College, she announced her intention to enter the Theological Seminary attached to the university. The professors of Divinity were surprised and shocked, but their protests were in vain as the charter of the institution provided that nobody should be excluded as a student on account of sex.
After completing her studies, her ordination as a Congregational minister took place at South Butler, N.Y., where she accepted a pastorate, at a salary of $300 a year. In spite of opposition and denunciation she successfully continued her work.
Some years after she had begun her career as a pastor she became the wife of Samuel C. Blackwell, and fifty years after her admission to the theological seminary, Oberlin honored her with the degree of doctor of divinity.