cians of their own sex, to assist educated women in the practical
study of medicine, and to train nurses for the care of the sick.[411]

[Sidenote: In law.]

In law, it would seem that Mistress Brut practised in Baltimore as early
as 1647; but after her the first woman lawyer in the United States was
Arabella A. Mansfield, of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. She was admitted to the
bar in 1864. By 1879 women were allowed to plead before the Supreme
Court of the United States.[412]

[Sidenote: In the ministry.]

Coming now to the consideration of the ministry, the first woman to
attempt to assert a right to that profession was Anne Hutchinson, of
Boston, in 1634. She was promptly banished. Among the Friends and the
Shakers women like Lucretia Mott and Anne Lee preached; and among the
primitive Methodists and similar bodies women were always permitted to
exhort; but the first regularly ordained woman in the United States
appears to have been Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, of the
Congregational Church who was ordained in 1852. In 1864 Rev. Olympia
Brown settled as pastor of the parish at Weymouth Landing, in
Massachusetts; and the Legislature acknowledged marriages solemnised by
women as legal. Phebe Hanaford, Mary H. Graves, and Lorenza Haynes were
the first Massachusetts women to be ordained preachers of the Gospel;
the latter was at one time chaplain of the Maine House of
Representatives. The best known woman in the ministry at the present day
is Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, a Methodist minister, president of the
National American Woman's Suffrage Association.[413]

[Sidenote: As newspaper editors.]

Women have from very early times been exceedingly active in newspaper
work. Anna Franklin printed the first newspaper in Rhode Island, in
1732; she was made official printer to the colony. When the founder of
the _Mercury_, of Philadelphia, died in 1742, his widow, Mrs. Cornelia
Bradford, carried it on for many years with great success, just as Mrs.
Zenger continued the _New York Weekly Journal_--the second newspaper
started in New York--for years after the death of her husband. Anna K.
Greene established the _Maryland Gazette_, the first paper in that
colony, in 1767. Penelope Russell printed _The Censor_ in Boston, in
1771. In fact, there was hardly a colony in which women were not
actively engaged in printing. After the Revolution they were still more
active. Mrs. Anne Royal edited _The Huntress_ for a quarter of a
century. Margar