Betty Bone Schiess (born 1923) helped spark a national controversy when she emerged as one of the "Philadelphia Eleven," a group of Episcopalian women who were ordained as priests in a Philadelphia church ceremony. It was an act of defiance since the church hierarchy was still debating whether or not to allow women to enter the priesthood.

Schiess was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1923, the daughter of Evan and Leah Bone. In 1945 she received her undergraduate degree from the University of Cincinnati, and then journeyed to New York's Syracuse University for a master's degree, which she earned in 1947. That same year she married William Schiess, and like most American women of her generation, settled down to a role as homemaker and, in time, mother to their two children. Yet during the 1960s, Schiess--like other educated, primarily middle-class women of her day--found a new direction with the burgeoning feminist movement...