n in all her public and private
relations:

Olympia Brown was born in Kalamazoo county, Michigan,
January 5, 1835. At the age of fifteen she began to teach
school during the winter months, attending school herself in
the summer. At eighteen she entered Holyoke seminary, but
finding the advantages there inadequate for a thorough
education, her parents removed, for her benefit, to Yellow
Springs, Ohio, where she entered Antioch college, Horace
Mann, one of the best educators of his day, being president.
There her ambition was thoroughly satisfied, and she was
graduated with honor in 1860. She then entered Canton
Theological school, was graduated in 1863, and, duly
ordained as a Universalist minister, commenced preaching in
Marshfield and Montpelier, Vermont, often walking fifteen
miles to fill her appointments. In 1864 she was regularly
installed over her first parish at Weymouth, Massachusetts.
Her energy and fidelity soon raised that feeble society into
one of numbers and influence.

In 1869, she accepted a call to Bridgeport, Connecticut,
where she remained seven years. In 1878, with her husband,
John Henry Willis, and two children she removed to Racine,
Wisconsin, where she became pastor of the church of the Good
Shepherd, without the promise of a dollar. The church had
been given up as hopeless by several men in succession,
because of the influence of the Orthodox theological
seminary. But she soon gathered large audiences and earnest
members about her; established a Sunday school, had courses
of lectures in her church during the winter, which she made
quite profitable financially for the church, beside
educating the people. Outside her profession she has also
done a grand work, in temperance and woman suffrage.[429]
She is rarely out of her own pulpit; has generally been
superintendent of her own Sunday school, and head of the
young ladies' club, doing at all times more varied duties
than any man would deem possible, and with all this she is a
pattern wife, mother and housekeeper, and her noble husband,
while carrying on a successful business of his own, s