Augusta Jane Chapin

Who was Augusta Jane Chapin?

Augusta Jane Chapin was a Universalist minister, educator and activist for women's rights. She was born in Lakeville, New York, the eldest of eleven children, to Almon Morris Chapin and Jane Pease.

In 1852, at the age of 16, she began to attend the Olivet College. In December 1864 in Lansing, Michigan, she became one of the first women to be ordained as a minister. In 1893 Chapin was conferred a Doctor of Divinity degree by Lombard University; the first ever awarded to a woman in America. In 1893 she chaired the Woman's Committee of the World Parliament of Religions as part of the Chicago World's Fair. She was a charter member of the American Woman Suffrage Association.

Chapin served many congregations during her ministerial career: itinerancy in Michigan, 1859–63; Bennington, Michigan, 1864–67; Mount Pleasant, Iowa, 1868; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1869; Iowa City, Iowa, 1870–73; Allston, Massachusetts, 1874; San Francisco, California and Oregon, 1874; Lansing, Michigan, 1875; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1875–76; Blue Island, Illinois, 1876–77; Chicago, Illinois, 1878; Aurora, Illinois, 1878–79; itinerancy in Michigan, 1880–83; Hillsdale, Michigan, 1884–85; Oak Park, Illinois, 1886–92; Omaha, Nebraska, 1894–95; and Mount Vernon, New York, 1897-1901.