1 SHE was an awardwinning student, who self-funded her education (it helped being an heiress from the Winchester rifle inventors’ dynasty) and the first woman to be ordained in Scotland in 1912.
2 Olive May Winchester, who was born in 1879, was the first woman to be admitted to study for and to graduate with a Bachelor of Divinity degree at the University of Glasgow. Born in America, Olive already had a degree from Harvard when she arrived to matriculate at Glasgow in 1909.
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3 She was an outstanding student, winning several prestigious prizes during her studies in the city. Glasgow University’s website describes her as a ‘pioneering female minister, biblical scholar and theologian’ who went on to become the first woman to complete a Doctor of Theology in Drew University, New Jersey.
4 When she graduated in 1912, the assembly of the Pentecostal Church of Scotland, which united in 1915 with the Church of the Nazarene, voted to ordain her, making her the first woman to be ordained by any Christian denomination in Scotland. The ordination took place on May 11, 1912 in the modern-day Sharpe Memorial Church of the Nazarene in Parkhead, Glasgow.
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5 The delegates also voted to establish a ministerial training college. A terraced house located at 1 Westbourne Terrace, Kelvinside, near the University of Glasgow, was purchased for the college and classes began there in late September 1913. Olive stayed there, as one of the teachers of the seven students, with the Rev George and Jane Sharpe and their family, and three of the students. Olive died on February 15, 1947
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