Olympia Brown  Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Augusta Jane Chapin (1836-1905)

Augusta Jane Chapin Augusta Jane Chapin

One of the earliest women to be ordained a Universalist minister, Chapin was also the first woman to receive an honorary D.D. She was born in Lakeville, New York on July 16, 1836 to Almon and Jane (Pease) Chapin. The family moved to Michigan when she was six. She became a teacher when she was fourteen and taught school in Lyons and Lansing, Michigan, but was unable to enroll at the University of Michigan for college, as it did not accept women. Eventually she went to Olivet College, where she converted to Universalism, and decided to become a minister. She was an itinerant preacher in the Portland, Michigan area for about four years.

Chapin received Universalist fellowship in May 1862, and was ordained in Lansing, Michigan on Dec. 3, 1863. She remained for another three years in Portland in a permanent settlement. After that she served many more congregations, a few of which were yoked parishes. The longer settlements included Iowa City, Iowa 1870-1874; Oak Park, Illinois 1886-1892; and Mt. Vernon, New York 1897-1901. She was active in mission work for a number of years with short ministries in Omaha and San Francisco. She also helped organize the first Universalist State Convention in Oregon. When she was in Iowa City she was one of three delegates from her state to the Centennial celebration in Gloucester, Massachusetts. She addressed the Woman’s Centenary Association, and promised further assistance from the West.

Chapin became the first woman to serve on the council of the General Convention, and she advocated that half of the trustees should be women. Prior to being called to a Hillside, Michigan pastorate in 1884, she finished an M.A. at the University of Michigan, which had denied her acceptance years previously. In the period between her Oak Park and Mt. Vernon settlements, she taught at the University of Chicago as a lecturer on English literature. She was also active in national suffrage work, and became one of the founders of the American Woman Suffrage Association. Chapin served on the organizing committee of the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, and was chairwoman of the Women’s General Committee. She gave comments at the opening and closing events of the World Parliament, read a paper Antoinette Brown Blackwell had prepared on women in ministry, and also moderated another session where two of the speakers were women. She was also on the committee to organize the Universalist congress there. At the World’s Fair Chapin received her honorary D.D. from Lombard University. She had lectured there for some years in a non-resident capacity. In her later years she led tours of Europe, and was planning for one when she died of pneumonia in New York City on June 30, 1905.