Anna Howard Shaw

Anna Howard Shaw, (February 14, 1847 – July 2, 1919) was a leading United States civil rights leader; a physician; and the first female Methodist minister in the United States (1880). She was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, but was brought to the United States as a small child. She studied at Albion (Mich.) College in 1872-75, graduated from the Boston University School of Theology in 1878, and received an M.D. from Boston University in 1885. She paid her own expenses through college and university (1) by preaching and lecturing and was pastor of Methodist Episcopal churches in Massachusetts at Hingham (1878) and East Dennis (1878-85).

She was a confidant of Susan B. Anthony in the woman's suffrage movement, leading the National American Woman Suffrage Association from 1904 to 1915. She was succeeded by Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt. She was also active in the temperance movement; and served as national superintendent of franchise for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in 1886-92. During World War I, she was head of the Women's Committee of the United States Council of National Defense, for which she became the first woman to earn the Distinguished Service Medal.

[edit] References

Her autobiography: The Story of a Pioneer (New York 1915).
Pellauer, Mary D. Toward a Tradition of Feminist Theology: the religious social thought of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Anna Howard Shaw. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson, 1991.