- Education - Janesville Sesquicentennial - People
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- [Photo of Frances WILLARD]
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- Frances Willard: A driving force in social reform
- When Frances WILLARD was 17 years old growing up on
a farm near Janesville in 1856, her
- brother, Oliver, cast his first vote. She angrily wondered
why she could not take part in what "was thought to be a
sacred time at our house." Turning to her sister, Mary,
she exclaimed, "Don't you and I love the country as well
as Oliver, and doesn't the country need our ballots?"
- Suffrage for women was just one cause Frances WILLARD
would embrace as a driving force
- that shaped the 20th century. But if the legacy of the historical
figure today is of a "holier-than-thou" type whose
life mission was to stamp out demon rum, it is probably because
that is what her followers wanted future generations to believe.
- True, the evil of liquor was the first cause Frances embraced
as a member of the Women's
- Christian Temperance Union in 1874, but it was merely the
door through which she was able to campaign for other social
reforms. In fact, one biographer suggests she was a more effective
politician in the suffrage movement than either Elizabeth Cady
Stanton or Susan B. Anthony.
- Frances diverted the significant power of the WCTU to such
"radical" social reforms as low-cost
- housing for poor working women and the safety of women in
industry.
- A successful lobbyist, she wielded considerable political
power during a time when Frances herself
- could not even vote. She was an educator, an author and an
ingenious organizer.
- Susan B. Anthony called her a "bunch of magnetism, possessing
that occult force which all leaders
- must have... Her brain was developed in a wonderful manner.
She seemed to have the power, so seldom possessed, to take in
everything at once."
- Many of her farsighted ideas were only realized long after
her death in Feb. 17, 1898.
- "Practical philanthropy," or "applied Christianity,"
are phrases often used in connection with Frances
- WILLARD, the first woman honored in Statuary Hall
in the U.S. Capitol Building.
- But after Frances' death, her secretary, Anna GORDON,
reportedly burned stacks of Frances'
- letters and journals to obscure other efforts of her life
in an attempt to make her the "legendary saint of the temperance
cause."
- A slight, attractive woman - 5'3" with delicate features
and red hair - Frances was nonetheless
- known for her stubborn determination. A colorful personality,
she had an adventurous and ambitious spirit, a self-admitted
temper and a craving for recognition and affection.
- Her persuasive speaking abilities made her perhaps the best-known
woman in the 19th century,
- and her voice was described as magnetic and musical. She
was an expert in forming public opinion.
- Frances was born Sept. 28, 1839, in Churchville, N.Y. Her
family later moved near Janesville to
- a home on the Rock River that she named Forest Home, where
they lived for 12 years.
- A rebellious youth, Frances felt early the sting of female
constraints. A tomboy who insisted on
- being called "Frank," she thrived out-of-doors,
liked to hunt and was a good shot. When her father, Josiah, would
not allow her to ride horses, she imagined a heifer to be a fine
steed.
- Josiah opposed education for women, but when Frances was
9 her father spent a winter serving
- on the Legislature in Madison, and Frances' mother, Mary,
a former school teacher, taught Frances and her sister, Mary,
at home.
- On Frances' insistence, Josiah built her the schoolhouse
in 1853 that has become a Wisconsin
- landmark. Located today on the Rock County Fairgrounds, the
structure was saved from razing by a campaign of Janesville Gazette
editor Stephen BOLLES in 1920 and today gives schoolchildren
a taste of pioneer life.
- Her 17th birthday was the worst day of her life, she wrote
in her diary: "This is the date of my
- martyrdom. My back hair is twisted up like a corkscrew; I
carry 18 hairpins, my head aches; my feet are entangled in the
skirt of my new gown. I can never jump over the fence again...
(or) chase the sheep in the shady pasture. It's out of the question
to climb the old burr oak tree to my 'Eagle's Nest' to write."
- On her 18th birthday, she picked up the novel "Ivanhoe"
and waited for the reprimand from her
- father, who did not approve of this type of reading. When
it came, she faced him serenely, and asked him if he did not
remember what day it was: "I am 18 - I am of age - I am
now to do what I think right; and to read this fine historical
story is, in my opinion, a right thing for me to do."
- Josiah, whom Frances said was "dumbfounded" by
her arrogance, regained his composure and
- concluded she was a "chip off the old block."
- Frances graduated as valedictorian from the North Western
Female College in Evanston, Ill., in
- 1859, and then taught in a number of rural schools, including
one term in her own Janesville school.
- One biographer notes that Frances was unhappy during this
period: "...she possessed an intense
- capacity for affection which had been thwarted throughout
her childhood," and she found comfort in deep friendships
with women.
- Her career as an educator peaked in 1871, when she was named
president of the Evanston
- College for Ladies. She was the first woman college president
to confer degrees on women.
- However, she resigned in 1874 when friction with president
Charles FOWLER became intoller-
- able. Frances had been engaged to FOWLER in 1861,
but severed marriage plans a few months later.
- His animosity would follow her through life, and he later
led a minority group that tried to thwart
- her election to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal
Church in 1887.
- After she resigned, Frances turned down a well-paying position
at a prestigious woman's college
- in favor of a non-paying job as Illinois corresponding secretary
of the WCTU.
- By 1879 she was president of the national organization, a
position she held the remaining 20 years
- of her life. In 1883 she founded the World's WCTU, the first
international organization for women.
- Under her leadership, the WCTU became a strong women's movement.
She adopted a "do-every-
- thing policy." One biographer wrote Frances thought
of the WCTU as a school to interest women in life beyond the
family circle so that they might take a more active and useful
part in society. With a stroke of genius, she tied "home"
to all her causes to encourage timid women to participate.
- The mission of the "White-Ribbon women is to organize
the motherhood of the world for the
- peace and purity, the protection and exultation of its homes,"
Willard said. The ballot for women was advertised as "a
weapon for the protection of her home."
- But her causes went far beyond the boundaries of home and
included advocating labor reform and
- physical fitness, health and hygiene, advice to young mothers,
city welfare work, the right of women to hold property, an eight-hour
work day, prison reform and the employment of police matrons.
After Chicago hired 10 police matrons, she asked when women police
would follow. She advocated day nurseries for working women.
- A "White Cross" department of WCTU tacked such
"unpure" issues as prostitution, white slavery,
- assault of women and children and the age of consent, which
was soon raised by legislation in most states.
- To accomplish her ends, she first used public education and
then political pressure.
- For 10 years she traveled between 15,000 and 20,000 miles
a year. She founded WCTU
- branches in the South and West during the horse and buggy
days of 1881-83, speaking in every city with a population over
10,000 and making headlines.
- In her later years, her political emphasis, which some WCTU
members considered too radical,
- and failing health, which caused long absences abroad, resulted
in some power loss in the organization. She had converted to
socialism in Europe, and for this was attacked by the press.
She shocked followers when she advocated education over legislation
as a better solution for the temperance movement, a radical departure
from WCTU goals.
- She would be proved right when the 1920 Prohibition amendment
was repealed in 1933 after
- years of lawlessness.
- Nonetheless, the rank and file remained loyal to their leader
until her death.
- After her death, the WCTU, headed by former secretary Anna
GORDON, sharply pulled in its
- reins and concentrated on prohibition and total abstinence.
- Frances' last visit to Janesville was on Jan. 2, 1898, when
she became faint on stage and was
- forced to cut short her speech.
- Of her home in Janesville she wrote: "Wherever I may
dwell, no place can be so dear."
- Frances died of influenza complicated by chronic anemia at
the age of 58 in a New York City
- hotel room. Two thousand people packed an auditorium there
for funeral services, and it is estimated 20,000 filed past her
casket in Chicago, where her ashes were sprinkled over her mother's
grave in Rosehill Cemetery. She was cremated, another radical
departure from the customs of the day.
- Frances' remarkable vision of the future lives on in legislation
that was finally passed or is still being
- fought for. Scores of buildings, memorials and scholarships
bear her name across the United States. She was one of 35 "famous"
Americans honored in a postage stamp series in 1940. Wisconsin
laws direct schools to observe Sept. 28 as Frances WILLARD
Day.
- Wrote one admirer after her death: "What she strove
fore, in fact, was not personal holiness,
- temperance or women's rights, but the progress of humanity."
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