Phebe Ann Hanaford

Phebe Ann Hanaford (1829-1921), born Phebe Ann Coffin at Siasconset on Nantucket, Massachusetts, was raised a Quaker before entering the Universalist ministry. Ordained at Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1868, she was the first woman ordained by the Universalists in New England, and she later became the first woman to serve as chaplain to the Connecticut legislature. A prolific author of some fourteen books, she published a life of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, one of the earliest biographies to appear after his assassination, and she was a prominent advocate of women's suffrage. She died in Rochester, New York, in 1921.

Written within months of the assassination, this popular life of Lincoln sold in the tens of thousands — and its author, Phebe Hanaford, went on to become the first woman ordained to the ministry in New England (Universalist, 1868), preaching, among much else, the funeral sermons of colleagues male ministers would not bury. The book that made her name, from the year that made her subject immortal.

(Note: this summary was automatically generated and may be inaccurate.)