Antoinette Brown Blackwell

Antoinette Brown Blackwell

The first women in the United States to be ordained as a minister by a recognized religious denomination, Antoinette Brown Blackwell was a lifelong crusader for women's rights. A graduate of Oberlin College, she also advocated against slavery and for temperance.

May 20, 1825

Henrietta, New York

November 5, 1921

Protestant minister, anti-slavery and women's rights activist, author

An 1847 graduate of Oberlin College, Antoinette Louisa Brown (later Blackwell) was the first woman to be ordained as a minister of a recognized religious denomination in the United States. Born to a large family in upstate New York, her parents became Congregationalists due to the charismatic preaching of Charles Finney, who would later become the President of Oberlin College. She began preaching at Sunday meeting at her Congregational church as a child and set her sights on attending Oberlin College and obtaining a degree in theology.

She came to Oberlin in 1845, where she met and became lifelong friends with Lucy Stone, another important suffragist. The two formed an off-campus debating club for women. Brown graduated with a BA in 1847 and lobbied the college to be admitted to pursue the theological course of study where students trained to become Congregationalist ministers. The college was reluctant to allow a woman to enroll but eventually agreed that Brown could take courses in theology, but would receive no formal recognition or theology degree.

Brown left Oberlin 1850 and began writing for Frederick Douglass's abolitionist paper, THE NORTH STAR. She also became an independent lecturer, touring the country speaking on the importance of abolition, women's rights, and temperance. In 1851, the Congregational church gave her a license to preach and in 1853, she was ordained as the minister of the First Congregational Church in South Butler, New York. Brown would not serve there long, apparently deciding that the Congregational church was too conservative.

Brown married abolitionist Samuel Blackwell (brother of Lucy Stone's husband Henry Blackwell) in 1856. The couple settled in New York and raised five children to adulthood. But even as she embraced her role as a mother, Brown Blackwell continued her work activist work. Like Lucy Stone, she split with suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in 1869 over the 15th Amendment, which Brown Blackwell supported even though it did not extend the vote to women. She helped from the American Women's Suffrage Association, continued speaking on behalf of women's rights, and became a prolific author, publishing eight books over the course of her lifetime. Her 1875 work, THE SEXES THROUGHOUT NATURE, Brown Blackwellargued that men and women had evolved to be different but equal. She insisted that women should conduct the study of women, an idea she termed "the science of female Humanity." She also practiced a form of feminist theology by making the case in her writings that Biblical strictures on women were specific to the era in which the Bible was written and were not meant to apply to contemporary women.

Oberlin refused to award Brown a theological degree in 1850, but in 1878 they awarded her an honorary master's degree and in 1908, a honorary doctorate of divinity. Brown Blackwell became the pastor at the All Souls Unitarian Church in 1908 and remained there until her death in 1921. She was the only surviving participation of the 1850 Women's Rights Convention to live to see the passage of the 19th Amendment.

In 1975, the United Church of Chris created the Antoinette Brown Awards for UCC women who "exemplify the contributions that women can make through ordained ministry." A historical marker honoring Antoinette Brown Blackwell was erected outside of the First Congregational Church in Oberlin in 2014.