What went through the minds of those members of Nolin Presbytery as, on Tuesday, November 5, 1889, they set apart diminutive Louisa Mariah Layman Woosley as an ordained minister of the Gospel? Were they aware of the monumental step they were taking? Did they realize the significance it would have in the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination and, indeed, in the reformed family of churches?

Louisa Woosley was, like True Grit's Mattie Ross, "a Cumberland Presbyterian and proud of it." In a ministry that touched seven decades, Louisa never left the Cumberland fold. In 1906, when a large...