Honoring women's history on Cape Cod

Women's history on Cape Cod is marked by resilience and leadership, with women playing pivotal roles in shaping the region’s communities since its early settlement. In the 19th century, while many men were away at sea, women managed households, farms, and local businesses, becoming the backbone of Cape Cod’s coastal villages. As educators, abolitionists, and suffragists, Cape Cod women like Mercy Otis Warren and Helen Augusta Crocker advocated for social change. During the 20th century, women continued to lead, from environmental conservation efforts to local politics. Today, women continue to be vital leaders in the region’s civic, cultural, and environmental spheres.

The Cape Cod Commission is working to collect stories of under-represented histories of our region. Bringing underrepresented histories to light has become a top priority in historic preservation because it helps to tell the full story of our history while also working to improve equity and build strong communities. Cape Cod has no shortage of these stories to highlight. Local preservation groups are expanding their historic inventory work to recognize previously overlooked stories and new museums and exhibits in the region are bringing these stories into focus.

This Women’s History Month, we are highlighting the story of Anna Howard Shaw of Osterville, who lived from 1847 to 1919. During her life she served as a reverend, physician, and suffragist.

Anna Howard Shaw was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, and came to Lawrence, MA in 1851 with her family. She was a pioneer in claiming her call to the ministry at a time when most churches would not ordain women. Shaw was the second woman to graduate from Boston University School of Theology in 1878 (she was the only woman in her class) and one of the first women to be ordained in any branch of Methodism. When she started preaching at Dennis Union Church in 1879, she was not yet ordained, but in the Spring of 1880 she was ordained and given a gift of a communion set so that she could serve two congregations in East Dennis and Dennis. Shaw served in Dennis until 1885, and her communion set can be seen at Dennis Union Church where it is on long term loan from the Dennis Historical Society.

While serving Wesleyan Methodist Church in East Dennis, Shaw earned a medical degree from Boston University. In 1885, at age thirty-nine, she broadened her activity from pastoral and healing ministries to also become the “master orator” for social justice concerns, organizing and lecturing throughout the world for the causes of temperance, women’s suffrage, and peace. She developed a close friendship with Susan B. Anthony and traveled widely to lecture for the cause of women’s suffrage. Shaw was the first ordained woman to preach in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, and London, and the first woman to deliver a sermon in the State Church of Sweden. In 1904, Shaw succeeded Miss Anthony in the presidency of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, where she served as president for over a decade. She was on the campaign trail almost constantly with company that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, Frederick Douglas, and US presidents.

In 1892, Shaw purchased property on Sea View Avenue in Osterville (Wianno) and built a summer cottage she named “The Haven” that served as a meeting place for the early women’s activists.

Shaw’s reflections on her Wianno house and the Cape were noted at the end of her life: “I am happy in having known and loved the Cape as it was, and in having gathered there a store of delightful memories. In later strenuous years, it rested me merely to think of the place.” For over thirty years Lucy E. Anthony, niece of Susan B. Anthony, was her friend, secretary and companion, living with her in Moylan, PA and before she died Anna Shaw gave the Wianno house to Lucy.

You can read more stories that reveal a broader picture of Cape Cod’s past by visiting capecodcommission.org/our-work/elevating-under-represented-histories.

Information from MACRIS inventory form BRN.2034, The Cape's Own Female Trailblazers: Part 2, Our History | Dennis Union Church, and About Anna Howard Shaw.