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Anna Howard Shaw

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"SHAW, ANNA Howard (1847-1919), American reformer, was born at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, Feb. 14 1847. When she was a small child her parents moved to Massachusetts, and soon afterwards to Michigan, where her father cleared a farm, 40 m. from the nearest post-office and too m. from the railway. From 1872 to 1875 she studied at Albion College, Mich., and in 1878 graduated from the Theological School of Boston University. The district conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church granted her a local preacher's licence, and she held pastorates at Hingham and East Dennis, Mass., remaining in the latter place seven years, until 1885. Meanwhile the New England Conference of the M.E. Church refused to ordain her because of her sex, and the refusal was upheld by the General Conference at Cincinnati in 1880. But the same year she was ordained in the Methodist Protestant Church. While preaching she had studied medicine and received the degree of M.D. from Boston University in 1885. She was then chosen lecturer for the Massachusetts Woman's Suffrage Association. The following year she was made national superintendent of franchise of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, serving for six years. She was also associated after 1886 with the National American Woman's Suffrage Association as lecturer, vice-president-at-large, and from 1904-15 as president, when she declined reelection. She had spoken in every state, before many state Legislatures, and before Congressional committees. She was a member of the International Council of Women; the International Suffrage Alliance; the National Society for Broader Education and the League to Enforce Peace. In 1917 she was appointed chairman of the woman's committee of the Council of National Defense, and in 1918 edited for this committee a department in the Ladies' Home Journal. She died at Moylan, Pa., July 2 1919, shortly after the passage of the suffrage amendment to the Federal Constitution by Congress. Her last message was an appeal to women to use their influence for the ratification of the League of Nations. She was the author of The Story of a Pioneer (1915, with Elizabeth Jordan) and joint editor of The Yellow Ribbon Speaker (1891, with Alice Stone Blackwell and Lucy Elmira Anthony).