Celia Burleigh: First Female Unitarian Minister and William's Second Wife

Celia Tibbets was a strong-minded woman during a time in history that was often (and systematically) unwelcoming to women who knew their own power. Born in upstate New York in 1826, Celia Tibbits was married at age 18 to Cordon Bryum Kellum, but this union ended in divorce in 1850. The couple had two children, but they died young - a painful pair of losses for Celia. A second marriage, to Charles Chauncey Burr, in 1851, was likewise dissolved by divorce in 1853. In the 1860s, Celia had the opportunity to work as personal secretary to one of the most important figures in women's intellectual history, the teacher and founder of the Troy Seminary for Women, Emma Willard.

Her marriage to William Henry Burleigh - her third, his second - occurred in 1865. They had known each other since meeting in Syracuse in the summer of 1850. Celia writes rapturously of this first encounter in her sketch of William's life in the posthumous edition of his Poems (p. xiv). When William suffered the wrenching losses of his father, his wife, and two of his children during the early 1860s, though, Celia and William were able to connect. 

Celia credited William with encouraging her public career: "It was entirely through Mr. Burleigh's influence that I entered upon my own public work in behalf of women, and it was his dying admonition that I should continue it" (p. xxx of the Sketch).

The public career of Celia's was quite notable. It began with the launching of Sorosis, the first women's club in the country. The women's club movement would grow in importance across the remaining years of the nineteenth-century, in both Black and white communities. The women's clubs were distinctive for being organized by and for women, and not being auxiliaries to any existing male-run organizations. Sorosis's origins came when women were denied admittance to hear Charles Dickens in the waning days of his final trip to the United States, in 1868. From its beginnings, Sorosis quickly grew to be nationwide, and thus Celia Burleigh also helped co-found a local club, the Brooklyn Women's Club, in 1869, where an "emphasis was placed on educating women in political matters and laws." 

She was described thus in the pages of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Revolution

Mrs. Burleigh is a most graceful and pleasing lecturer, fine and stately in figure, with a face of singular beauty and refinement, and
impresses her audience at once with the perfect sincerity, truth and purity of her own personality. She has entered the lecturing field, we
understand, as a profession, and will undoubtedly prove one of its most brilliant and valuable acquisitions.

She wrote essays that were published widely, including one on the "Rights of Children" - an unusual topic for the time, albeit a fairly conventional take on children's duties as well as rights. It will be included in this website later, and linked from here.

Soon after William's death, Celia became the first woman Unitarian minister to hold a pulpit - at the noted church in Brooklyn, Connecticut. This was the same congregation led by Samuel J. May during the Canterbury controversies. 

Sadly, her energy was dissipated quickly by breast cancer. She died a mere four years after William, in 1875. But within her forty-nine years, she established two institutions - Sorosis and Brooklyn Women's Club - that made important contributions to women's suffrage, education, and political impact, while also breaking the gendered glass ceiling in ministry for the Unitarians. And between those achievements, she also worked with Emma Willard, and took the true measure of William Henry Burleigh's greatness, as well as publishing her memoir of him. Celia was a woman who forged a new path forward, and in doing so modeled a different way to be a woman in the world. 

References

Report on "The Rights of Children," The Revolution (New York City) 5:19:293 (May 12, 1870).

Celia Burleigh cherished this portrait of Haitian Revolutionary leader Touissaint L'Overture. She obtained it from the great Detroit Abolitionist, George De Baptiste (1814-1875) while attending a convention for equal rights in Detroit. The painting is now held by the Brooklyn Unitarian Church. Thanks to Dennis Landis for these pictures.

Notices of Celia in the History of Woman Suffrage

May 28-29, 1851 - In attendance at the Akron, Ohio, Woman's Rights Convention. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 1 p. 111.

Mentioned as wearing the "Bloomer costume" around 1856. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 1 p. 844.

May 14, 1869 - Attendance and leadership at a Woman's Suffrage convention in Brooklyn, NY. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 2  p. 398-399.

Summer 1869 - Copy of a letter written by Celia about a Woman Suffrage convention that took place in Saratoga, NY. She both attended and spoke at this meeting. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 2  p. 402-403.

August 25-26, 1869. Was a speaker at a National Woman Suffrage Convention in Newport, RI. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 2  p. 403.

Celia is included in a list of speakers for Woman Suffrage, and is stated to be "graceful, poetic, and earnest, is equally at home on the platform or in the drawing room." History of Woman Suffrage, v. 2  p. 434.

Celia and her husband William were both signatories on a document calling for the creation of an American Woman Suffrage Association and a subsequent convention for its members. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 2  p. 757.

November 24, 1869. Celia is a delegate for the state of New York at the first American Woman Suffrage Convention in Cleveland, OH. The records from this meeting show that she was an active particpant, serving as the NY representative on a committe to establish a permanent convention, and temporarily filling in as President of the proceedings. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 2  p. 759, 760, 787, 790, 801, 802.

May 10, 1871 - Attended and spoke at a meeting of the American Woman Suffrage Association in New York City. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 2  p. 817.

October 13, 1873 - Attended and spoke at a meeting of the American Woman Suffrage Association in New York City. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 2  p. 832.

September 1869 -  Present at a meeting that established a state society for Woman Suffrage in Connecticut. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 3  p. 321, 322.

Spoke in front of the Rhode Island state legislature in favor of Woman Suffrage. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 3  p. 341.

July 13-14, 1869 - Spoke at a state convention at Saratoga Springs, NY. The notice lists Celia as being the president of the Brooklyn Equal Rights Association. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 3  p. 396.

November 28-29, 1870 - Spoke at a Northwestern Association Convention in Detroit, MI. History of Woman Suffrage, v. 3  p. 516.

Bibliography of Works by Celia Burleigh

Celia Burleigh, "Preface: William Henry Burleigh," in William Henry Burleigh and Celia Burleigh. Poems by William H. Burleigh. With a Sketch of his Life by Celia Burleigh. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1871.

Secondary Sources on Celia Burleigh

An excellent biography of Celia, with full source data, is available, in the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography, written by Dennis Landis, who is consulting with the Burleigh Family project to update the material.