Small archive of her family correspondence, some written by her, most written to her and other members of the Brown and Blackwell families. Includes: 4 Autograph Letters Signed, 1842-45; 17 postcards, 15 with Autograph Notes Signed and 2 with printed messages, 1878-1905; and 3 Autograph Letters/Notes Signed, 1901-03.
Antoinette Louisa Brown Blackwell (1825-1921) was born in upstate New York in a family of ten children. In 1846, at age 21, she entered Oberlin College, one of the few American universities that then admitted both men and women. There she met future suffragette leader Lucy Stone, who became her lifelong friend. After completing a literary course, over the objections of shocked family and friends, she went on to study Theology at Oberlin, completing her course-work, though her professors refused to give her credentials to become a Protestant Minister, an unheard of vocation for women in 1850. Nevertheless, she persevered as an itinerant preacher and in 1853 received appointment as Pastor of a New York church –the first formally-appointed woman Minister in America. Becoming active in the anti-slavery, temperance and women’s rights movements, she resigned her pastorate and married like-minded reformer Samuel Blackwell, whose brother had married Lucy Stone a few months earlier. The Blackwell brothers’ sister, Elizabeth, had also made history, becoming the first woman M.D. in America. During the rest of her long life, Antoinette was a women’s rights activist, in close association with Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony, a scientific scholar, author of eight books and mother of six daughters. Among the varied papers in this archive is the earliest known letter by Antoinette, written to her brother, February 7, 1842, at age 16, while holding her first teaching job after graduating from a girl’s academy and already dreaming of college. Two other letters were written by her, nearly sixty years later, after he husband’s death, to a daughter who suffered from mental illness. One postcard was written by feminist Phebe Hanaford, called “America’s first certifiable lesbian minister”; two by astronomer Maria Mitchell, who headed the Association for the Advancement of Women, in which Antoinette was active; and one (signed with initials) by famed suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton, then compiling her classic 5-volume history of women’s suffrage, who asked Antoinette to “ give us a chapter of your reminiscences, with all the wit, humor, [pathos?] you can throw into it. Your work in temperance, women’s rights, the church, literary, religious, political, social, your reflections, philosophy and prophesying, etc. , your college experiences, your first acquaintance with Lucy, Susan, Lucretia, and how they influenced you.” There are also 3 Autograph Notes Signed by Alice Stone Blackwell, Lucy’s daughter, who was Secretary of Susan B. Anthony’s Woman Suffrage Association and editor of its Woman’s Journal. Other early letters and later notes are from and to Brown and Blackwell family members, including Antoinette’s sister (who with their brother, died of fever shortly before Antoinette left for Oberlin. A detailed summary of the papers is available by request.