Trailblazer: Antoinette Brown Blackwell

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825-1921) was the only surviving participant of the 1850 Women’s Rights Convention to see the Nineteen Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed.  She voted in 1920, about one year before she died at age 96 at her home in Elizabeth.

Blackwell was an abolitionist and the first woman to be ordained as a minister.  She later shifted her focus to women’s rights.

In 1891, Blackwell became president of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association.

She founded the American Women Suffrage association after splitting from Susan B. Anthony’s National Women Suffrage Association.  The two had different opinions, including her opposition to laws that would make it easier for women to divorce their husbands.