Antoinette Brown Blackwell

Blackwell, Antoinette Brown (1825–1921), U.S. social reformer and Congregationalist minister. A graduate of the theological seminary of Oberlin College, she became an itinerant preacher. In 1853 the Congregational church in South Butler, N.Y., made her its pastor. She thus became the first woman in the country to be formally appointed pastor of a church. Blackwell was a writer as well. Her best-known book was The Sexes Throughout Nature (1875).