Women’s suffrage leader Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919) emigrated to the United States from England when she was two. At the age of twelve, she moved with her mother and four siblings to a desolate log cabin in Michigan. She often had to undertake strenuous chores as the family struggled to survive in the wilderness. After the Civil War, Shaw went to high school and wrote a well-received sermon for her Methodist minister. Although criticized for her career choice by her peers, Shaw pursued a career in preaching, attending Albion College and the Boston University of Theology. She graduated as the only woman in a class of 42 men, and became the first women ordained by the Methodist Protestant Church in America. Although already a member of the American Woman Suffrage Association, Shaw was convinced by Susan B. Anthony to join the National Women Suffrage Association. Shaw was instrumental in merging the two groups and giving the suffrage movement unity. She died just a few months before Congress ratified the 19th Amendment.