Mary Leggett Cooke (1852-1938) was an American Unitarian minister.[1][2] She was a member of a group of women ministers, the Iowa Sisterhood, who organized eighteen Unitarian societies in several Midwestern states in the late 19th century and early 20th century.[3][4][5]
Biography
Mary Lydia Leggett was born in Sempronius, New York, April 23, 1852. She is the daughter of Rev. William Leggett and Frelove Frost Leggett. She was educated in Monticello Seminary, Godfrey, Ill. In temperament she is a mystic, a child of nature, intense, electric, aspiring, emotional. From earliest childhood she was a worshipper of the religion of nature, and was ordained from birth a priestess of love. In 1887 she was formally ordained to the Liberal ministry in Kansas City, Mo., Rev Charles G. Ames, of Philadelphia, preaching her ordination sermon. She built and dedicated a church in Beatrice, Neb., of which she was minister until 1891, when she went to Boston, Mass., and became minister of a sea-board parish thirty-six miles from that city. During the five years of her ministry Miss Leggett's success as an orator and as a writer has given promise of future power. She speaks with inspirational force and earnestness. Her church is in Green Harbor, Mass., and was founded by the granddaughter of the statesman, Daniel Webster, whose summer home was in that quaint hamlet on old Plymouth shores. In Miss Leggett's study is the office-table on which the great orator penned his speeches, and which is now devoted to the service of a woman preacher. [2]
Her husband, Rev. George Willis Cooke, died a week after their wedding.[6]
References
- ^ UUDB Admin (28 October 2000). "Cooke, George Willis". Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography. Retrieved 25 April 2024.
- ^ a b Willard, Frances Elizabeth; Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice (1893). "LEGGETT, Miss Mary Lydia". A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life. Charles Wells Moulton. p. 456. Retrieved 24 April 2024.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
- ^ Hepokoski, Carol. "Women Ministers in the Prairie Star District". Bring, O Past, Your Honor. The Ministers Association of the Prairie Star District of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Retrieved April 17, 2011.
- ^ Hitchings, Catherine F. “Universalist and Unitarian Women Ministers,” The Journal of the Universalist Historical Society, v.x, 1975, p.124
- ^ "Remembering the Iowa Sisterhood". UUA.org. 2011-10-26. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
- ^ Hannan, Caryn (1 January 1998). Michigan Biographical Dictionary. State History Publications. ISBN 978-1-878592-95-8. Retrieved 25 April 2024.
External links
Works related to Woman of the Century/Mary Lydia Leggett at Wikisource
