Page:Woman of the Century.djvu/135

130 woman, Olympia's ancestry belonged to what Oliver Wendell Holmes would call "The Brahmin Caste of New England," though both her parents were Vermont mountaineers. On her father's side she traces her lineage directly back to that sturdy old patriot. Gen. Putnam, of Revolutionary fame, and through her mother she belongs to a branch of the Parkers, of Massachusetts. Olympia's parents moved to Nlichigan, as pioneers, in what was then the remote West. Her birthplace was a log-house, and her memories of childhood are the narrow experiences common to a farmer's household in a new country, with only the exceptional stimulus to mental culture afforded by the self-denial of a mother determined that her daughters should enjoy every advantage of study she could possibly obtain for them. At the age of fifteen Olympia was promoted to the office of mistress of the district school and was familiarized with all the delights of "boarding around." She alternated teaching in a country school in summer with study in the village academy in winter, till, in the fall of 1854, she entered Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, in South Hadley, Mass. Though she remained only one year, reviewing branches already quite thoroughly mastered, she there first began to be interested in those theological investigations that have shaped her life. Questioning the doctrinal teaching made prominent in the seminary, she secured the strongest Universalist documents she could find and laid the foundations of a faith never since shaken. Attracted by the reputation of Horace Mann as an educator, she became a student in Antioch College, Ohio, and was graduated from that institution in i860. The question confronted her then, "what use shall I make of my life?" To a careful paper, asking advice of the college faculty on that point, she received, as their best deliberate thought, direction to an indefinite course of reading and study, with the one aim of selfish intellectual enjoyment, varied by purely private acts of charity. Against the narrow limitations of such an existence all the activities of her soul rebelled, and, after much thought and in spite of determined opposition from every quarter, she chose the profession of the ministry, and was graduated from the Theological seminary, in Canton. N. Y., a branch of St. Lawrence University. She was ordained in Malone, N. Y., in June, 1863, by vote of the ordaining council of the Universalist Church, the first instance of the ordinaation of a woman by any regularly constituted ecclesiastical body. There had been woman preachers and exhorters in America ever since the days of Anne Hutchinson, but in no case had such preachers been ordained by ecclesiastical council or by the authority of the church of which she was a representative. This public recognition of a woman minister by a body of the church militant opened the pulpit to women so effectively that her ordination was followed by others of other denominations. Her first pastoral labors were as pulpit supply in Marshfield, Vt., in the absence of Rev. Eli Rallou, pastor, and preaching every alternate Sunday in East Montpelier. Desirous of better perfecting herself for efficient service, early in 1864 she moved to Boston and entered the Dio Lewis Gymnastic School, taking lessons in elocution of Prof. Leonard. There she received and accepted a call to the church in Weymouth. Mass., and was formally installed as pastor on 8th July, 1864, the Rev. Sylvanus Cobb preaching the installation sermon. Early in her pastorate the question was raised concerning the legality of the marriage rite solemnized by a woman. The subject was brought before the Massachusetts Legislature and referred to the judiciary committee, who decided that, according to the definition of legislative statutes, the masculine and feminine pronouns are there used interchangeably, and the statutes, as then worded, legalized marriages by ministers of the gospel, whether men or women. In the spring of 1866 Olympia attended the Equal Rights convention, held in Dr. Cheever's Church in New York, and there met Susan B. Anthony, Parker Pillsbury and other prominent advocates of woman's enfranchisement. From her early girlhood she had taken a keen interest in every movement tending toward a wider scope for girls and women, but on that occasion she was first brought into personal relations with the active reformers of the day. In 1867 the Kansas Legislature submitted to popular vote a proposition to amend their constitution by striking out the word "male." That was the first time the men of any State were asked to vote upon a measure for woman suffrage. Lucy Stone

immediately made arrangements with the Republican central committee to send one woman speaker to aid in the ensuing canvass. In response to urgent importunity that she should become the promised speaker, Olympia obtained the consent of her parish, and personally furnished a supply for her pulpit. She set forth on her arduous mission in July and labored unremittingly till after election. A tour through the wilds of Kansas at that time involved hardships, difficulties and even dangers. Arrangements for travel and lilting escort had been promised her, but nothing was provided. Nevertheless, overcoming obstacles that would have taxed the endurance of the strongest man, she completed the entire canvass of the settled portions of the State. Between 5th July and 5th November she made 205 speeches, traveling, not infrequently, fifty miles to reach an appointment. The Republican party, that submitted the proposition and induced her engagement in the field, so far