Olympia Brown was the first woman settled as pastor in the State. Her parish was at Weymouth Landing. In 1864 she petitioned the Massachusetts legislature "that marriages performed by a woman should be made legal." The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom the matter was referred, reported that no legislation was necessary, as marriages solemnized by women were already legal.[1] Thus the legislature of the State established the precedent, that "he" meant "she" under the law, in one instance at least. Phebe Hanaford, Mary H. Graves and Lorenza Haynes were the first Massachusetts women to be ordained preachers of the gospel. Rev. Lorenza Haynes has been chaplain of the Maine House of Representatives.
The three best-known women sculptors in this country were born and bred in Massachusetts. They are Harriet Hosmer, Margaret Foley and Anne Whitney. Harriet Hosmer was the first to free herself from the traditions of her sex and follow her profession as a sculptor. When she desired to fit herself for her vocation there was no art school east of the Mississippi river where she could study anatomy, or find suitable models. Margaret Foley, who, amid the hum of the machinery of the Lowell cotton mills, first conceived the idea of chiseling her thought on the surface of a "smooth-lipped shell," was obliged to go to Rome in order to get the necessary instruction in cameo-cutting. There her genius developed so much that she began to model in clay, and soon became a successful sculptor in marble. Lucy Larcom, in her "Idyl of Work," says of Miss Foley:
"That broad-browed delicate girl will carve at Rome
Faces in marble, classic as her own."
One of her finest creations is "The Fountain," first exhibited in Horticultural Hall at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, 1876. A free art-school was opened to women in Boston in 1867, and Anne Whitney was not obliged to go to Rome for instruction in the appliances of her art. Harriet Hosmer and Margaret Foley have both made statues which adorn the public buildings and parks of their native country; and Anne Whitney's statues of Samuel Adams and Harriet Martineau are the crowning works of her genius.
- ↑ Olympia Brown's own account of this transaction is as follows: In 1864, soon after my settlement in Weymouth, I solemnized a marriage. It was the first time a woman had officiated in this capacity, and there was so much talk about the legality of the act, that I petitioned the legislature to take such action as was necessary in order to make marriages solemnized by me legal. The committee to whom it was referred reported that no legislation was necessary.
