Evangelist Agnes Ozman was assured a place in Pentecostal history when she
became the first to speak in tongues at Charles Parham's Bethel Bible
College in Topeka, Kansas. Despite conflicting accounts about her
expectations and sequence of events her experience is usually credited with
establishing the validity of Parham's assertion that tongues speech
evidenced Spirit baptism.
Ozman was born in
Albany, Wisconsin, on September 15, 1870. She grew up in rural Nebraska,
where she attended a Methodist Episcopal church. A participant in various
nondenominational settings as well, she eventually espoused both
premillennialism and healing. In 1892 she enrolled for the winter term at T.
C. Horton's Bible school in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1894 she moved to New
York to continue her training at A. B Simpson's training institute:
Unsettled and driven by the need to pursue spiritual reality, she served
briefly as a city missionary in Kansas City. From there she went, in the
fall of 1900, to Parham's school in Topeka, Kansas.
After her tongues
experience in 1901, Ozman returned to city missionary work. In Lincoln in
1906 she heard about Pentecostalism, related her earlier experience, and
identified with the emerging movement. In 1911 she married Pentecostal
preacher Philemon LaBerge. The two traveled about the country, holding
meetings wherever possible. In 1917 LaBerge affiliated with the Assemblies
of God, receiving credentials as an evangelist. She died in Los Angeles on
November 29, 1937
Bibliography: E. L.
Blumhofer. The Assemblies of God, 2 vols. (1989); A. 0.
LaBerge, What God Hath Wrought (n.d.). E. L. Blumhofer
