Frances Willard (suffragist)

Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard ( born September 28, 1839 in Churchville, New York, † February 17, 1898 in New York City ) was an American teacher, suffragette and social reformer. It belonged in 1874 to the founders of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union ( WCTU ) and was from 1879 until her death, as its president.

Life

Frances Willard was the daughter of businessman Josiah Flint Willard from Churchville and his wife Mary Thompson Hill Willard, a teacher by profession. Her brother Oliver was 5 years older than her. When Frances was two years old, the family moved to Oberlin, Ohio. Still in the parade in 1842, her sister Mary was born. 1848 the family moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, where his father ran a farm. Frances was initially taught by her mother. Later, when in 1853 the small village school that was built for her father, was finished, she visited them. In 1857 they then moved to the Female College to Milwaukee.

In 1858, she was now 18 years old, the family moved again, this time to Evanston, Illinois. A year later, in 1859 she graduated from the Northwestern Female College and then began training as a teacher. She taught in Evanston several years and went from 1868-1870 with her friend Kate Jackson for 3 years traveling around the world. Back in the U.S., she moved back to Evanston, where she was appointed in 1871 to the Rector of the Evanston College for Ladies. As in 1873, the college was integrated into the Northwestern University, she was given the position of dean of women at the Women's College and became a professor of English and Art. After disputes with the university president Charles Henry Fowler, with whom she in 1861, inter alia, was once engaged, she resigned her job in 1874.

Work

This was their chance and the beginning of their involvement in the temperance movement, their struggle for the rights of women and their quest for a more social and more just society.

In the summer of 1874 she traveled to the east coast and took part in many campaigns still quite young temperance movement. When she returned to Evanston, she was approached to lead the Chicago group of the movement. In November 1874, she participated in the founding congress of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in part in Cleveland, Ohio and was immediately on the Corresponding Secretary ( Secretary) elected. She changed her position with its commitment to the lifeline of the organization.

As a talented speaker, she performed in election campaigns, with her talent for writing, she created brochures and leaflets, with their ability to inspire people, she organized campaigns. She had built up so many contacts with women as quickly as any other member of the organization. When she was finally elected in 1879 president of the WCTU, the WCTU had grown up with 27,000 members already the largest women's organization in the country.

Under Frances Willard's leadership fought the WCTU for women's suffrage and the eight-hour day, led the temperance movement, supported the kindergarten movement, advocated prison reform, called model facilities for disabled children and campaigned for federal aid in terms of general education and vocational training ( to name a few to name points). She represented the Christian socialism, the Knights of Labor joined in the fight for the eight-hour day and organized in 1882 in the Prohibition Party, the campaign against the sale of alcohol.

Frances Willard was in the years known to a publicly respected and recognized politician. In 1890 she was the most famous woman in the States, comparable with Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1930s.

The WCTU, Frances Willard led in 1898 to her death, was under her direction, with more than 150,000 members, the largest political and most effective women's organization of its time.

Frances Willard died in preparation for a trip to England on 17 February 1898 in a New York hotel from the effects of anemia and flu.

Posthumously, she was honored in 1905 for their services and their sculpture - was added to the National Statuary Hall in Washington - a work by Helen Farnsworth Mears. Your bust took place in 1910 in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York their place.

Publications

• Woman and Temperance, or, The work and workers of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Park Pub, Hartford, 1883, reprint: .. Arno Press, New York, 1972 ISBN 0-405-04093-8.
• Nineteen Beautiful Years, or, Sketches of a Girl 's Life, Woman's Temperance Publication Association, Chicago, 1886.
• How to win a Book for Girls, Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York,, 1888.
• Glimpses of Fifty Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman, HJ Smith & Co., Chicago, 1889.
• A Woman of the Century: 1470 Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life, Charles Wells Moulton, Buffalo, 1893, new edition: Gordon Press, New York, 1975 ISBN 0-87968-183-7
• A Great Mother, Woman's Temperance Publication Association, Chicago, 1894.
• Do everything: a handbook for the world 's white ribboners, Woman's Temperance Publication Association, Chicago, 1895.
• A Wheel Within a Wheel, Fleming H. Revell Co., New York, 1895, reprint: Standard Publications Inc., U.S., 2007, ISBN 1-59462-808-4.
• How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle: Reflections of an Influential 19th Century Woman, Fair Oaks Publishing, U.S., 1991, ISBN 0-933271-05-0.
• Great American Women in the 19th Century. A Biographical Encyclopedia, Humanity Books, New York, 2005 ISBN 1-59102-211-8 ( co-author: Mary A. Livermore )

Swell

All sources in English

• The Frances Willard House - Evanston, Illinois
• Harvard University Library - Women Working 1800-1930
• American National Biography
• University of Wisconsin -Madison Libraries - Sketches of Wisconsin pioneer women
• Encyclopædia Britannica 's Guide to Women's History