Brown was also an articulate advocate for women's rights and one of the few first generation suffragists who were able to vote with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

The drive for education instilled by Brown's mother had compelled her to finish high school and advance to the university level.

Brown and her younger sister Oella decided to attend Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.

Perhaps the best example of the school's thinking was the words of a Chemistry professor, "You are not expected to remember all of this, but only enough to make you intelligent in conversation.

Despite finishing her schooling, and gaining a year of preaching experience with Congregations in Marshfield and Montpelier, Vermont, Brown still met opposition to her ordination.

One member of the Council had heard Brown's sermon the week prior, and left his support.

Some consider her ordination, approved by her regional Association, to be of greater significance than that of Antoinette Brown Blackwell, ordained in 1853 by the Congregational Church in South Butler, NY.

She also spent some time at home with her family in Michigan, before beginning her first pastorate in Weymouth Landing, Massachusetts.

This was intended as a high compliment, as Henry Ward Beecher was widely considered to be the best preacher in the United States at the time.

With the encouragement of Lucy Stone and her husband, Henry Blackwell, Brown decided to travel to Kansas in order to speak on women's rights.

Brown believed that the second generation of suffragists suffered from poor leadership and erroneously focused their efforts at the state level.

These new tactics led to the women's right to vote amendment being presented to Congress and marches in front of the White House.

The mistreatment of these women coupled with the massive press exposure led to more support for the movement.

[8] The 19th Amendment would finally be ratified on August 25, 1920, marking the first time that Olympia Brown along with countless other women were able to vote.

[9] In 1963 to honor the centennial of Brown's ordination, the Theological School of St. Lawrence University mounted a plaque at the church she pastored at in Racine, Wisconsin.

[10] In the 1970s the Olympia Brown League was founded by Susan Hester and Fran Kaplan to help women's name rights in Milwaukee, in response to a court decision against women seeking to keep their maiden names upon marriage; Brown had kept hers upon her marriage.