Representative women of New England/Sarah A. Dixon
REV. SARAH A. DIXON, S.T.B., pastor of the Congregational church in Tyngsborough, Mass., was born in the town of Barnstable, on Cape Cod, where her parents, William and Joice (Cascoyne) Dixon, natives f)f Warwickshire, England (the father a soldier in the Fortieth Massachusetts Regiment in 1862), are now living. She is the youngest of a family of eight children, four sons and four daughters. When asked not long ago concerning her "call to preach," she replied, "I had always had a great desire to help people, and when about twenty years of age this desire developed into a definite decision to be a minister."
Miss Dixon's early life was her best preparation. Her girlhood was sjjcnt mostly in school and out of doors, her home being near the shore; and her young soul was filled with the incense from the fields, the marshes, and the sea.
Two early incidents proved to be determining factors in her life. One was the "redemption" which came to her through the influence of her grammar school teacher. His interest and keen insight into her nature inspired her with an ambition to excel, and changed her from a "trouble" in the school into a student. From this time until she was sixteen lessons were mastered and high rank held without any definite hope of opportunities for a higher education.
The other determining incident came when Miss Dixon was sixteen years old. Two young women of Barnstable, hearing of her progress in her studies, became interested in her welfare. They offered to help send her to Bridgewater Normal School. Her parents were very glad to accept the kindness, as they were not possessed of an abundance of this world's goods, and they had a large family. By giving entertainments and soliciting among their friends these two ladies w(>re enabled to raise the money to pay her expenses for the first year. Accordingly she entered Bridgewater Normal School in 1883, and was graduated in 1885.
Miss Dixon was now eighteen years old, holding a teacher's diploma and waiting for a position. She was asked to teach the primary department in Brewster, Mass., which she did successfully for a year. Then followed two years' work in the intermediate grade at Cotuit. At the end of this period her former teacher secured for her a position in one of the Brockton schools, and in that city she spent two years. It was while in Brockton that Miss Dixon decided to study for the ministry. She determined to prepare herself for the career of an efficient worker. With this end in view she entered in the fall of 1890 the College of Liberal Arts of Boston University. She laughingly told her friends that she intended to take seven years of college and theological work, that she had poor preparation, poor health, one hundred and fifty dollars, and a conviction that it was the right thing to do. This conviction made it possible for her to accomplish the task. The second year was the hardest: her money was expended, and she was obliged to do some work outside of her college course. During all of this year she taught an evening school three nights each week, and every Wednesday taught as a substitute in the Hammond Street Grammar School. This left but three evenings and four days a week for all of her college work. At the end of the year Miss Dixon's health failed, and .she was obliged to lie in one of the Boston hospitals for sixteen weeks. The next year, through the kindness of friends and her physician, she was enabled to pursue her studies without doing extra work, and was graduated, taking the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy. The following September she entered the Theological School of Boston University, and was the only woman in the school eligible to a divinity degree. During her course here an opportunity came to her to supply the pulpit of the Methodist Church at Centreville, Mass. This village on Cape Cod is five miles from Barnstable, her native place, and seventy-five miles from Boston, where she was at school. For two years she travelled this distance every week, preaching on Sundays and taking full charge of the work. She was not allowed to be called the pastor, as the Methodists do not grant licenses to women to preach; but the people wanted her, and so she was allowed to do the work, the presiding elder of the district being nominally the pastor.
Miss Dixon was graduated from the Theological School early in June, 1897, taking the degree of Bachelor of Sacred Theology and ranking among the first in her class. During the last few months of her course she had supplied the pulpit of the Congregational Church at Tyngsborough, Mass. She now received a unanimous call from this church to become its .settled pastor.
On the 16th of June, after being subjected to a long and trying examination by a council of all the churches in the Andover Conference, which met at Tybsborough, she was ordained a minister of the gospel. The ordaining prayer was offered by the Rev. I. W. Dodge, of Newburyport: the right hand of fellowship by the Rev. Amelia Frost, then minister of the Congregational Church at Littleton; and the charge to the churches by the Rev. W. A. Bartlett, now of Chicago.
Miss Dixon has served as pastor of this church at Tyngsborough for seven years with marked success. Its membership since she came here has increased nearly one-third. In all departments the church work has been quickened, and the society has enjoyed a greater degree of prosperity, both spiritual and material, than ever before in its history. A new pipe organ has been bought, and extensive repairs and improvements have been made on the church building and parsonage.
Well-equipped for her profession, Miss Dixon shrinks from none of its duties. She has conducted thirty or more funeral services in her parish, and has married sixteen couples. She has delivered two Memorial Day orations in Provincetown, one in Barnstable, and one in Tyngsborough, has read papers, notably one on Browning, before literary societies, and made addresses at various public gatherings.
In June, 1902, she started on a four months' tn'i) to Europe, returning in September. On the Continent she visited Antwerp, Rouen, Paris, and in England, London, Lincoln, York, Chester, and other places. She preached in Birniina;hani, Stratford-on-Avon, and in Brailes and Wellesbourne in Warwickshire.
She keeps house in the cosey parsonage in Tyngsborough, and her home is a centre for uplifting and stimulating influences. Her frankness and sincerity have won for her the confidence as well as the warm affection of her parishioners, her whole-souled devotion to her chosen work and the earnestness and aptness of her pulpit utterances impressing even the casual hearer and chance acquaintance. Her hundreds of friends and admirers feel that she reflects honor upon the sacred profession. Years of careful study and high thinking have made her the cultured, refined woman whom to meet is a pleasure long to be remembered and to number in friendship is a privilege.