Anthony, Lucy Elmina

Minister, physician, lecturer, and suffragist, Anna Howard Shaw was born on February 14, 1847, in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, the sixth of seven surviving children of Thomas Shaw and Nicolas (Stott) Shaw. AHS described her family's move to America (first to Massachusetts and later to the Michigan wilderness), their hardships on the frontier, her determination to get an education, and her career shifts from teacher to minister to physician to social reformer in her autobiography, The Story of a Pioneer (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1915).

An avid reader, AHS was largely self-taught before becoming a teacher at the age of 15. She later finished high school, and entered Albion College (Michigan) in 1873 at the age of 26. In 1878 she graduated from the divinity school of Boston University, the only woman in her class. In addition to performing various pastoral duties in the Methodist Protestant Church, AHS enrolled in Boston University's medical school in 1883, graduating with an M.D. in 1886. She became increasingly convinced that the problems she encountered in her ministry and as a physician could not be solved without major political and social reforms, and that obtaining the vote for women was a necessary first step.

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