Anna Garlin Spencer

Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931) was an American educator, feminist, and Unitarian minister. Born in Attleboro, MA, she married the Rev. William H. Spencer in 1878. She was a leader in the women's suffrage and peace movements. In 1891 she became the first woman ordained as a minister in the state of Rhode Island. In Providence she was commissioned to develop the Religious Society of Bell Street Chapel which was to be devoted to the religious outlook of James Eddy. She compiled Eddy’s views into a Bond of Union to which members of the new society would subscribe. She was later associated with the New York Society for Ethical Culture (1903–1909) and the New York School of Philanthropy (1903–1913). In 1909, she signed onto the call to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Over a long period she was a popular lecturer and wrote on social problems, especially concerning women and family relations. Her writings include Woman's Share in Social Culture (1913) and The Family and Its Members (1922).

Read more about Anna Garlin Spencer:  Biography, Impact of Spencer’s Work

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    Of all the wastes of human ignorance perhaps the most extravagant and costly to human growth has been the waste of the distinctive powers of womanhood after the child-bearing age.
    —Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)

    Can a woman become a genius of the first class? Nobody can know unless women in general shall have equal opportunity with men in education, in vocational choice, and in social welcome of their best intellectual work for a number of generations.
    Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)

    Monday’s child is fair in face,
    Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
    Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
    Thursday’s child has far to go,
    Friday’s child is loving and giving,
    Saturday’s child works hard for its living;
    And a child that is born on a Christmas day,
    Is fair and wise, good and gay.
    Anonymous. Quoted in Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire, vol. 2, ed. Anna E.K.S. Bray (1838)

    The universal social pressure upon women to be all alike, and do all the same things, and to be content with identical restrictions, has resulted not only in terrible suffering in the lives of exceptional women, but also in the loss of unmeasured feminine values in special gifts. The Drama of the Woman of Genius has too often been a tragedy of misshapen and perverted power.
    —Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)

    The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature—a type nowhere at present existing.
    —Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)