BIOGRAPHY
Anna Howard Shaw was born on February 14, 1847 in
Newcastle-on-Tyne, England. Soon
after her second birthday, her family left for America. They settled first in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where young
Anna read and re-read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and became passionate
about issues of slavery.
When the Shaws moved again in 1859, they found
themselves in a much different environment: the wild forests of Michigan.
Anna and her family lived in a tiny log cabin surrounded by 360 acres of
wilderness. Her father and
her two oldest brothers returned to Lawrence to work, leaving Anna, four
siblings, and her mother to fend for themselves.
Finally, at the age of 15, Shaw was able to get work as a
schoolteacher, earning two dollars a week.
It was at this point that she first dreamed of becoming a minister.
When her older sister got married, she invited Shaw to live with
her in the town of Big Rapids. Here
Anna attended high school and met an influential mentor, Miss Lucy Foote.
Through Miss Foote’s guidance, she was invited to give her first
sermon in the village of Ashton.
Shaw’s family vehemently disapproved of her
ambition to become a preacher, and they offered to pay her way through the
University of Michigan if she abandoned the idea.
She preached on thirty-six more occasions that year, however, and
then decided to attend Albion College without any financial assistance.
She was nearly broke when she arrived at Albion, and the President,
George Jocelyn, was impressed by her and allowed her to live with his
family during her first year at school. Shaw gave a series of temperance lectures in an effort to
defray the costs of her education, and Miss Foote took up a collection
totaling ninety-two dollars from her friends in Big Rapids.
In 1876, Shaw began to study for the ministry at
Boston University. She was
the only woman in her class, and she still had to get by on limited funds.
After her graduation, she was pastor of the Wesleyan Methodist
Church in East Dennis, Massachusetts for seven years.
In 1882 she decided she wanted to attend medical school as well,
and in 1885 she became a physician as well as a minister, preaching at two
churches and treating the urban poor three days a week.
Soon, Shaw decided to give up her ministry posts
altogether, choosing to travel the country lecturing on temperance, and
later traveling with Susan B. Anthony for the cause of women’s suffrage.
Shaw continued to cross the country and campaign for women’s
rights for the next eighteen years. She
was elected president of the National Woman Suffrage Association in 1904.
Shaw held this position until 1915, when she looked forward to
retirement at her home in Moylan, Pennsylvania.
