Antoinette Brown Blackwell

First Ordained Woman Minister and Social Reformer

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921), was the first woman to be ordained as a minister in the United States. She was also a well-versed public speaker on the social reform issues of her time, and used her religious faith in her efforts to expand women's rights. Always ahead of her time, she wrote prolifically on religion and science, constructing a theoretical foundation for sexual equality.

Childhood and Early Years
Antoinette Louisa Brown was born in Henrietta, New York on May 20, 1825, the daughter of Joseph and Abby Morse Brown. From childhood on she preferred writing and men's farm chores to housework. Brown's parents were very religious and, during her childhood, they were inspired by the many of the revivals sweeping through upstate New York at that time.

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Mary Baker Eddy

Founder of First Major Religion by a Woman

Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) was an influential American author, teacher and religious leader, noted for her groundbreaking ideas about spirituality and health, which she named Christian Science. She articulated those ideas in her major work, Science and Health (1875). Four years later she founded the Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, which today has branch churches and societies around the world.

Childhood and Early Years
Mary Morse Baker was born on July 16, 1821 in Bow, New Hampshire, the youngest of six children of Abigail and Mark Baker. Mary's formal education was interrupted by periods of sickness. When not in school, she read and studied extensively at home, writing prose and poetry from an early age. Her parents sought help from physicians for her ailments, but the treatments brought only temporary relief.

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Henriette Delille

Black History Month: Creole Nun

Henriette DeLille (1813–1862) founded the Catholic order of the Sisters of the Holy Family, made up of free women of color in New Orleans. The order provided nursing care and a home for orphans, later establishing schools as well. In 1989 the order formally opened its cause with the Vatican in the canonization of Henriette DeLille.

Henriette Delille was born in 1812 in New Orleans, Louisiana, into a life of privilege. Her father, Jean-Baptiste (de Lille) Lille Sarpy (French/Italian) was born in 1762 in France; her mother, Marie-Josèphe Díaz, a free quadroon Creole of color of French, Spanish and African ancestry, was born in New Orleans. Delille's parents were Catholic, as were most Creoles and free people of color.

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