It is a little-known fact that The Congregationalist was the first paper in Boston to have a woman editor.
Ellen Stone joined Henry Martyn Dexter as associate editor in 1867 and she stayed on until 1878, when she went to Bulgaria as a missionary with the American Board. (She would become something of a household name after being kidnapped and held hostage by "brigands".) Sarah Bolton and then Frances Dyer took over her post, and for many years afterward The Congregationalist always had women serving on the editorial staff. By 1906 there were a total of three.
Women also wrote much — perhaps even most — of the paper's content. The contributors included many prominent men, though perhaps not so well-known today: Increase Tarbox, Graham Taylor, Alonzo Quint, and Charles Sheldon. Even John Greenleaf Whittier contributed a poem or two. But the women were equally if not more impressive. The list included Lucy Larcom, author of the ever popular New England Girlhood, and Katherine Lee Bates, who wrote the words to "America the Beautiful". A commemorative issue in 1906 includes pictures of twenty-one women who had contributed articles over the past several decades.
Around the turn of the century, The Congregationalist, like many papers of its day, began to run regular feature sections for women and children, and of course women supplied most of the copy. But we have to guess that among all the many unsigned editorial pieces, on all kinds of topics, were written by the likes of Frances Dyer or Sarah Bolton or Ellen Stone.
Oddly, The Congregationalist was conservative, if not a bit stuffy, on the issue of women's suffrage and their right to ordination as ministers. But this didn't seem to matter much when the male editorial staff needed someone with the intellectual and organizational skills it took to be an editor of a national magazine. As long as they didn't try to vote or preach, women apparently had all the freedom in the world to inform and shape the ideals of a denomination already well-known for its commitment to education and learning.
-Peggy
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