Rev. Olivia Stuard Henry, 103, pastor

In May 1951, the Rev. Olivia Stuard Henry was one of three women ordained at the five-day national conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, held in Philadelphia.

She was the only one of the three immediately named a pastor, assigned to head Tyree AME Church at 3832 Hamilton St. An Inquirer report said she was "the first woman in the history of the Philadelphia Conference to receive such an appointment."

On Tuesday, Mrs. Henry, 103, died of complications from cancer at the 58th Street Presbyterian Home in the Kingsessing section of Philadelphia.

A teacher at Frederick Douglass Elementary School at 22d and Norris Streets at the time of her 1951 ordination, Mrs. Henry also headed the evangelistic bureau of the denomination's first Episcopal district.

In 1988, The Inquirer reported that Mrs. Henry, then 82, had taught from 1926 to 1951, first at the Joseph Singerly School and later at Douglass, both in North Philadelphia.

The occasion for the report was the 50th anniversary of the Douglass school, built in 1938 as an annex to Singerly.

An honored guest at that anniversary event, Mrs. Henry was, at the time of the 1988 report, pastor of Mount Ephraim Christian Church, which she had cofounded in 1958 with her husband, Eddie Mack Henry.

Born in Philadelphia, Mrs. Henry graduated in 1924 from Philadelphia High School for Girls and in 1926 from Philadelphia Normal School, which trained teachers.

Crescida Cox, a friend, said in an interview yesterday that Mrs. Henry was one of the founders of an interracial group of Philadelphia teachers that in the 1940s "picketed stores on Ridge Avenue, bringing pressure on the store owners to hire African Americans."

Cox said Mrs. Henry served as president of the Philadelphia section of the National Council of Negro Women.

As a member in the 1940s of the board of directors of the council and its first national chaplain, Mrs. Henry was a confidant of its founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, "joining Dr. Bethune in meetings with international leaders such as Dr. Ralph Bunche and Eleanor Roosevelt."

From 1947 to 1951, she was national president of the Phi Delta Kappa sorority.

Cox said Monrovia College in Liberia awarded Mrs. Henry an honorary doctor of divinity degree. After she left the AME Church to found her own, Mrs. Henry attended meetings of church ministers in Germany and in Haiti.

Mrs. Henry is survived by a nephew and two nieces. Her husband died in 1969.

A viewing was set for 9 a.m. tomorrow at the Union AME Church, 1614 Jefferson St., followed by a funeral there at 10. Burial is to be in Rolling Green Memorial Park, West Chester.