Anna
Howard Shaw was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne
on 14th February, 1847. Her family emigrated to the United
States in 1851 and settled on the Michigan frontier.
Her father
left home and after her mother had a mental breakdown, the 12 year
old Anna had to take responsibility for the rest of the family.
At the age of fifteen Anna became a school teacher.
A convert to woman's suffrage, Anna
became America's first Methodist woman
minister in 1880. An outstanding open-air preacher, Anna spoke on
various issues including prohibition
and women's rights.
In 1886 she graduated from Boston University as a doctor, but decided
to work instead for the cause of woman's suffrage. Anna was a member
of the Women's Christian Temperance Union
and was president of the National American
Woman Suffrage Association (1904-1915). She published her autobiography,
The Story of a Pioneer,
in 1915.
Anna Howard Shaw,
who was head of the Women's Council of National Defense during the
First World War, died on 2nd July, 1919.
(1) In her autobiography, The
Story of a Pioneer, Anna Howard Shaw explained how her father
told her off for reading a book.
The
injustice of the criticism cut deep; I knew I had done and was doing
my share for the family, and already, too, I had begun to feel the
call of my career. For some reason I wanted to preach - to talk to
people, to tell them things. Just why, just what, I did not yet know
- but I had begun to preach in the silent woods, to stand up on stumps
and address the unresponsive trees, to feel the stir of aspiration
within me.
When my
father had finished all he wished to say, I looked at him and answered,
quietly, "Father, some day I am going
to college."
I can
still see his slight, ironical smile. It drove me to a second prediction.
I was young enough to measure success by material results, so I added,
recklessly:
"And
before I die I shall be worth ten thousand dollars!"
The amount
staggered me even as it dropped from my lips. It was the largest fortune
my imagination could conceive, and in my heart I believed that no
woman ever had possessed or would possess so much. So far as I knew,
too, no woman had gone to college. But now that I had put my secret
hopes into words, I was desperately determined to make those hopes
come true. After I became a wage earner I lost my desire to make a
fortune, but the college dream grew with the years; and though my
college career seemed as
remote as the most distant star, I hitched my little wagon to that
star and never afterward wholly lost sight of its friendly gleam.
Last updated: 7th January, 2002
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