Antoinette Brown Blackwell

Steeped in family correspondence, contemporary newspaper accounts, and Blackwell’s own work, Elizabeth Cazden has written the first biography of the 19th Century feminist and first American woman to be ordained a Christian minister. Blackwell recreates her dramatic struggles to ‘breach the great wall of custom’ and become a minister. Equally compelling is the story of her attempt to integrate both public and private lives. Cazden follows Blackwell from her student days at Oberlin, through her feminist activity on the lecture circuit with Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B Anthony, and her marriage and rearing of five daughters.