Frances Willard (suffragist)

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Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (September 28, 1839-February 17, 1898) was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. She was born in Churchville, New York but spent most of her childhood in Janesville, Wisconsin. She moved to Evanston, Illinois when she was 18.

Willard was elected president of United States Women's Christian Temperance Union in 1879, a position which she held for life. She created the Formed Worldwide W.C.T.U. in 1883, and was elected its president in 1888.

She founded the magazine The Union Signal, and was its editor from 1892 through 1898.

Her tireless efforts for women's suffrage and prohibition included a fifty-day speaking tour in 1874, an average of 30,000 miles of travel a year, and an average of four hundred lectures a year for a ten year period. Her influence was instrumental in the passage of the Eighteenth (Prohibition) and Nineteenth (Women Suffrage) Amendments to the United States Constitution.

She wrote Woman and Temperance, Nineteen Beautiful Years, A Great Mother, Glimpses of Fifty Years, and a large number of magazine articles.

Other honors: Willard was the first woman represented among the illustrious company of America’s greatest leaders in Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, she was national president of Alpha Phi in 1887 and the first dean of women at Northwestern University. In 1940, she was portrayed on a U.S. postage stamp. A dormitory at Northwestern University, Willard Residential College was named after her. The Evanston, Illinois home where she lived and worked from 1865 until her death in 1898 has been preserved and made into a museum in honor of her memory.

She was publicly honored many times during her life by persons of prominence in government and society in many lands. Carrie Chapman Catt, Pi Beta Phi, said of her, "There has never been a woman leader in this country greater than nor perhaps so great as Frances Willard."

She was called the "best loved woman in America," and her close friend, John Greenleaf Whittier, wrote of her: She knew the power of banded ill, But felt that LOVE was stronger still. And organized for doing good, The World's united womanhood.

Willard died at the Empire Hotel in New York City while preparing to set sail for a visit to England.

Frances Willard Avenue in Chico, California is named in her honor.

[edit] Publications

Woman and temperance, or the work and workers of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Hartford, Conn.: Park Pub. Co., 1883.
"Frances E. Willard," in Our famous women: an authorized record of the lives and deeds of distinguished American women of our times... Hartford, Conn.: A.D. Worthington, 1884.
Nineteen beautiful years, or, sketches of a girl's life. Chicago: Woman's Temperance Publication Association, 1886.
Woman's Christian Temperance Union. President. President's Annual Address. 1888
Glimpses of fifty years: the autobiography of an American woman. Chicago: Woman's Temperance Publication Association, 1889.
Do everything: a handbook for the world's white ribboners. Chicago: Woman's Temperance Pub. Association, [1895?].
How to Win: A Book For Girls NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886. reprinted 1887 & 1888.

[edit] References

Baker, Jean H. Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists. Hill and Wang, New York, 2005. ISBN 0-8090-9528-9.
Gordon, The Beautiful Life of Frances E. Willard, (Chicago, 1898)
Alpha Phi International Fraternity