Jessie Colman Monser was an early ordained woman minister in the Stone-Campbell tradition and an important witness to the growth of clergywomen in the Disciples stream. She was ordained in 1891 — the same decade in which Clara Hale Babcock became the first woman ordained among the Disciples — and forty years later, in 1931, she reported on the number of women then serving as ministers in Disciples churches.
That combination makes her a pioneer and a record-keeper at once, and it is why she matters here. The history of women in ministry in this movement did not begin and end with first ordinations. It became a long argument over recognition, placement, and authority that ran across the whole twentieth century, and Monser is one of the few figures who stood at both ends of it.
This entry is thin because the record is thin. Sources beyond the Encyclopedia's "Women in Ministry" article are welcome; the encyclopedia itself uses both "Coleman" and "Colman" for her middle name.
Relationships
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Was a contemporary of: Clara Hale Babcock
Both were among the first generation of ordained women in the Disciples stream in the 1880s and 1890s.