Woman of the Century/Mary Lydia Leggett

LEGGETT, Miss Mary Lydia, minister, born in Sempronius, Cayuga county, N. Y., 23rd April, 1852. She is the daughter of Rev. William Leggett and Frelove Frost Leggett. She was educated in Monticello Seminary, Godfrey, Ill. MARY LYDIA LEGGETT. In temperament she is a mystic, a child of nature, intense, electric, aspiring, emotional. From earliest childhood she was a worshipper of the religion of nature, and was ordained from birth a priestess of love. In 1887 she was formally ordained to the Liberal ministry in Kansas City, Mo., Rev Charles G. Ames, of Philadelphia, preaching her ordination sermon. She built and dedicated a church in Beatrice, Neb., of which she was minister until 1891, when she went to Boston, Mass., and became minister of a sea-board parish thirty-six miles from that city. During the five years of her ministry Miss Leggett's success as an orator and as a writer has given promise of future power. She speaks with inspirational force and earnestness. Her church is in Green Harbor, Mass., and was founded by the granddaughter of the statesman, Daniel Webster, whose summer home was in that quaint hamlet on old Plymouth shores. In Miss Leggett's study is the office-table on which the great orator penned his speeches, and which is now devoted to the service of a woman preacher.