Normal School in 1883, and was graduated in 1885.
Miss Dixon was now eighteen years old, holding a teacher's diploma and waiting for a position. She was asked to teach the primary department in Brewster, Mass., which she did successfully for a year. Then followed two years' work in the intermediate grade at Cotuit. At the end of this period her former teacher secured for her a position in one of the Brockton schools, and in that city she spent two years. It was while in Brockton that Miss Dixon decided to study for the ministry. She determined to prepare herself for the career of an efficient worker. With this end in view she entered in the fall of 1890 the College of Liberal Arts of Boston University. She laughingly told her friends that she intended to take seven years of college and theological work, that she had poor preparation, poor health, one hundred and fifty dollars, and a conviction that it was the right thing to do. This conviction made it possible for her to accomplish the task. The second year was the hardest: her money was expended, and she was obliged to do some work outside of her college course. During all of this year she taught an evening school three nights each week, and every Wednesday taught as a substitute in the Hammond Street Grammar School. This left but three evenings and four days a week for all of her college work. At the end of the year Miss Dixon's health failed, and .she was obliged to lie in one of the Boston hospitals for sixteen weeks. The next year, through the kindness of friends and her physician, she was enabled to pursue her studies without doing extra work, and was graduated, taking the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy. The following September she entered the Theological School of Boston University, and was the only woman in the school eligible to a divinity degree. During her course here an opportunity came to her to supply the pulpit of the Methodist Church at Centreville, Mass. This village on Cape Cod is five miles from Barnstable, her native place, and seventy-five miles from Boston, where she was at school. For two years she travelled this distance every week, preaching on Sundays and taking full charge of the work. She was not allowed to be called the pastor, as the Methodists do not grant licenses to women to preach; but the people wanted her, and so she was allowed to do the work, the presiding elder of the district being nominally the pastor.
Miss Dixon was graduated from the Theological School early in June, 1897, taking the degree of Bachelor of Sacred Theology and ranking among the first in her class. During the last few months of her course she had supplied the pulpit of the Congregational Church at Tyngsborough, Mass. She now received a unanimous call from this church to become its .settled pastor.
On the 16th of June, after being subjected to a long and trying examination by a council of all the churches in the Andover Conference, which met at Tybsborough, she was ordained a minister of the gospel. The ordaining prayer was offered by the Rev. I. W. Dodge, of Newburyport: the right hand of fellowship by the Rev. Amelia Frost, then minister of the Congregational Church at Littleton; and the charge to the churches by the Rev. W. A. Bartlett, now of Chicago.
Miss Dixon has served as pastor of this church at Tyngsborough for seven years with marked success. Its membership since she came here has increased nearly one-third. In all departments the church work has been quickened, and the society has enjoyed a greater degree of prosperity, both spiritual and material, than ever before in its history. A new pipe organ has been bought, and extensive repairs and improvements have been made on the church building and parsonage.
Well-equipped for her profession, Miss Dixon shrinks from none of its duties. She has conducted thirty or more funeral services in her parish, and has married sixteen couples. She has delivered two Memorial Day orations in Provincetown, one in Barnstable, and one in Tyngsborough, has read papers, notably one on Browning, before literary societies, and made addresses at various public gatherings.
In June, 1902, she started on a four months' tn'i) to Europe, returning in September. On the Continent she visited Antwerp, Rouen,
