1900 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 23pp Unpublished Sermon on Women's Rights & Theological Dignity of Women.

An excellent address on the theological rights of women and of the benefit of women to society and the mission of the Church, delivered over multiple decades. The locations range from Iowa in 1900, and then a hot-bed of suffrage activity, to Morgan Hill, California, etc., and from 1900 to 1930. 

The MSs is by repute that of Lee Anna Starr, but we have so far not been able to locate any examples of her manuscript sermons. That said, she was active preaching for women's suffrage and temperance events during this period, and I have located her in Iowa in 1899 and in California a few years later. The fact that it is sermon 90 is consistent with someone who was pastoring and not exclusively preaching for suffrage events, etc,. so it is possible, but would require further research. 

That said, the knowledge and use of history, ranging from education, to missions, and other aspects of social history, and its interaction with the text suggest someone very knowledgeable. It's repeated use over decades also suggest someone known as a speaker on the theme. 

Dr. Lee Anna Starr [1853-1937] was the first female graduate of Pittsburgh Seminary. After her graduation, in 1893, she was ordained in the Methodist Protestant Church [1895] became an accomplished pastor, a leader in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, an influential suffrage speaker, a noted biblical scholar, and an author, most notably of The Biblical Status of Women. 

23 pages in length, it is based on Philippians 4.3 "Help those women which laboured with me in the gospel." 

Extracts:

"It is an age of revelation, an era of revolution. An age of revelation in which the flash light of investigation is reaching farther into the realm of the undiscovered: a time when an ambitious woman race is coming to know not only the worth of the external world, but the value of the soul as well . . . When the Spirit of God who searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God, cooperates with the mind of man, causing him to deal more equitably with mankind, regardless of sex. This too is largely due to the revelation which has opened the eyes of man to behold in the fairer fortunes of the woman race, capabilities scarcely inferior to his own. 

An era of revolution is this in which woman, who though first to transgress, was first to repent, and although hushed and hindered by her companions has like truth crushed to earth [again] arose and in her virtue has asserted its power and steadfastness. A time in which, thanks be to Jehovah, who is no respecter of persons, and to his revealed will which is a lamp to the feet and a light to the pathway of woman as well as men, and to his liberty giving gospel which is so widely diffused today, woman is coming to occupy the place which rightly belongs to her, and man, though  having succeeded so long in keeping woman in the back ground and asserting his own authority is coming to realize the fulfilment of the Scripture,  "The last shall be first and the first shall be last."

Not only is this true in the secular world, but in the spiritual as well. Man might better assert the superiority he claims for himself in ceasing to prevent the progress of woman and by "Helping those women which laboured with me in the gospel." 

Notice first the supremacy of the fairer portion of the grace. For years the wealth of the Transvaal was trodden underfoot and its value unnoticed. But once the English knew of that diamond region, they were ready to shed the noblest blood of the nations that they might have the added glory the hidden treasure would bring. So it has been for ages that the real worth of the better half of the human race has been ignored. But once woman's true nobility was asserted it was seen in the nations glory and in the beauty and usefulness of the church. . . . [But] man, like a certain religious denomination seemed in former times to cling to the idea that "ignorance is the mother of devotion" and that woman might do the service for which God had created her she must be kept ignorant of her power and capabilities. This idea is by no means confined to the dark ages nor does belong exclusively to foreign and barbaric nations. 

It has not long been an acknowledged fact in Xtian America, and with some it is yet doubted that woman, side by side with man physically, intellectually, and morally can hold her place unfailing in the forced marches and prolonged struggles of life. If there is anything new under the sun, it is the recognition on the part of man, of woman's right to exercise those functions intellectual and spiritual with which an all wise Creator has endowed her. It has not been two centuries ago since a schoolmaster asserting his intention to carry a class of ladies through fractions was at once stopped by the school committee who observed that woman's mind was incapable of comprehending anything so difficult. We read of how the Puritan fathers established a college for the higher education of the young, which meant the young men, for while the mothers shared in the labours necessary to sustain the institution, the daughters were denied of the privilege of it. "

She continues on the show the historical infantilization of women, and argues that Pentecost, the New Testament, etc., all portend that the age of Christ and the Spirit is also the age of women. 

An important and substantial discourse straddling the before and after of the 19th Amendment, finally granting women the right to vote in 1920.