Wikipedia

Lee Anna Starr

Lee Anna Starr (January 6, 1853 – January 10, 1937)[1] was an American clergywoman, temperance and suffrage activist, and writer. She was an ordained Methodist Protestant minister.

Lee Anna Starr
A white woman wearing academic cap and gown, gazing down at an open book in her hands
Lee Anna Starr, from the frontispiece of her 1926 book
BornJanuary 6, 1853
Point Pleasant, West Virginia, U.S.
DiedJanuary 10, 1937 (age 84)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Occupation(s)Clergywoman, translator, temperance worker, classical scholar, writer

Early life and education

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Starr was born in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, the daughter of David Lee Starr and Sarah Jane Harper Starr.[2] Her father was a physician and an ordained minister.[3][4] She attended high school in Athens, Ohio,[2] and was the first woman to graduate from Allegheny Theological Seminary (a predecessor of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary), in 1893.[3][5][6] She earned her Doctor of Divinity degree at Kansas City University in 1911.[2]

Career

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Starr was pastor of churches in Canton, Illinois,[7] Paris, Illinois,[8] Adrian, Michigan,[9] Bellevue, Pennsylvania, and Avalon Park, Chicago.[2] In 1905 she made headlines when she discussed her refusal to perform marriage ceremonies for people who were divorced, though that policy was in keeping with her denomination's stance at the time, and she made exceptions.[10] She addressed the 1922 and 1923 meetings of the International Association of Women Preachers.[11][12]

Starr's The Bible Status of Woman (1926) laid out several feminist interpretations of women's roles in the Bible, based in her understanding of Greek and Hebrew texts.[13] "One cannot but admire the author of this remarkable book for her broad information, scholarship and painstaking research," commented a 1927 reviewer, who highlighted Starr's "surprisingly strong argument" for Priscilla as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.[14]

Beyond her religious work, Starr took an active interest in social reforms. She was arrested three times for picketing saloons in Pittsburgh, and eventually served a brief jail sentence for "praying in front of saloon" with her sisters.[3][15] She organized women's suffrage groups in Pennsylvania, and was a lecturer for the National Woman Suffrage Association and the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).[2][16][17] She spoke at the National Prison Association's annual conference in 1904.[8]

Publications

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  • The Ministry of Woman (1900)
  • "Where is My Soldier Boy Tonight?" (1918, sheet music; words and music by Starr)
  • The Bible Status of Woman (1926)[18]

Personal life

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Starr died in 1937, at the age of 84, in Pittsburgh.[3][15]

References

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  1. ^ Exact dates of her birth and death as given on her Pennsylvani death certificate, via Ancestry.
  2. ^ a b c d e Price, Carl Fowler (1916). Who's who in American Methodism. E.B. Treat & Company. p. 210.
  3. ^ a b c d Greene, June (1939-07-31). "Firs Women: Dr. Starr Fought Tradition for First Pulpit". The Pittsburgh Press. p. 19. Retrieved 2024-09-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ "Windy City's Woman Pastor in Bellevue; Dr. Lee Anna Starr of First M. P. Church, Chicago". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 1912-01-15. p. 12. Retrieved 2024-09-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. ^ "Women's History at PTS: Lee Anna Starr". Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. 2022-03-31. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  6. ^ McMullen, Frances Drewry (February 21, 1925). "Women in the Pulpit". The Woman Citizen. 9 (18): 12–13 – via Internet Archive.
  7. ^ "Personals". Religious Telescope. 70 (34): 1101. August 31, 1904.
  8. ^ a b Transactions of the National Prison Congress. American Correctional Association. 1904. p. 104.
  9. ^ Bonner, Richard Illenden (1909). Memoirs of Lenawee County, Michigan: From the Earliest Historical Times Down to the Present, Including a Genealogical and Biographical Record of Representative Families in Lenawee County. Western Historical Association. p. 508.
  10. ^ "This Woman Pastor Refuses To Marry Divorced Persons". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 1905-06-25. p. 25. Retrieved 2024-09-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ^ "Women Preachers Hold National Meeting". The Christian Century. 40 (32): 1020. August 9, 1923.
  12. ^ "Women Preachers Meet at Winona Lake, Indiana" The Congregationalist 107(September 21, 1922): 367.
  13. ^ Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. "Leaving Eden: Resurrecting the Work of Katharine Bushnell and Lee Anna Starr" in Nancy Calvert Kayzis and Heather Weir, eds., BreakingBoundaries: Female Biblical Interpreters Who Challenged the Status Quo (T&T Clark International 2010): 144-168.
  14. ^ Siler, John C. (October 1927). "Book Reviews". The Union Seminary Review. 39 (1): 87.
  15. ^ a b "Crusader of the 70's Dies; Dr. Lee Anna Starr was Arrested for Praying in Front of Saloon". The Daily American. 1937-01-12. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-09-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. ^ Woman's Christian Temperance Union (1916). Report of the ... Annual Convention of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Bowman Publishing Company. p. 26.
  17. ^ "Midyear Meeting and Institute". The Potter Enterprise. 1917-04-12. p. 4. Retrieved 2024-09-12 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. ^ Starr, Lee Anna (1926). The Bible Status of Woman. Fleming H. Revell Company.
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