The 9th essay in A Noble Company, volume 11, is on Sallie R. Ford (1828-1910)

Baptist women of the nineteenth century were expected to align themselves with cultural and social expectations as well as biblical admonitions for their sex. They were to be pious, submissive, and maternal. The “true Baptist woman,” in this way, was not very far off the cultural ideal for most American women. Though Sallie Rochester Ford believed, practiced, and advanced these behavioral proscriptions, she also helped create and advertise a second Baptist message. This other image afforded women status as soldiers of the faith and as aggressive warriors in the coliseum of pluralistic American religious life. Through this second role, Baptist women could assert the strength and resilience of the independent baptistic spirit. --Richard C. Traylor