Frances
Willard, the daughter of a schoolteacher, was born in Churchville,
New York, on 28th September, 1839. She
studied at the Northwestern Female College, Evanston, Illinois and
afterwards taught science at Pittsburgh Female College and Genesee
Wesleyan Seminary in New York.
In 1871 Willard was appointed president of Northwestern Female College
and when it merged with the university, she became college dean and
professor of esthetics. Willard also worked as a journalist and for
a time was editor of the Chicago Daily Post.
In 1874 Willard helped establish the Women's
Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The main objective of the WCTU
was to persuade all states to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages.
Under the leadership of Willard (1879-1898), the organisation succeeded
in bringing about temperance education in schools. The WCTU also supported
the abolition of prostitution, prison reform and women's
suffrage.
By 1881 Willard had become president of the WCTU. She was an outstanding
lecturer, organizer, writer and for a time was editor of the Chicago
Daily Post. Willard published her autobiography, Glimpses
of Fifty Years, in 1889.
Williard
became a socialist and in 1897 she
shocked fellow delegates at the national conference of the Women's
Christian Temperance Union when she argued that "socialism
is the higher way; it enacts into everyday living the ethics of Christ's
gospel. Nothing else will do."
Frances Willard developed Influenza
while
visiting New York City and died on 17th
February, 1898.
(1)
Francis Willard, journal entry during the presidential campaign of
John
C. Fremont in 1856.
This is election day and
my brother is twenty-one years old. How proud he seemed as he dressed
up in his best Sunday
clothes and drove off in the big wagon with father and the hired men
to vote for John C. Fremont, like the sensible "Free-soiler"
that he is. My sister and I stood at the window and looked out after
them. Somehow, I felt a lump in my throat, and then I could not see
their wagon any more, things got so blurred. I turned to Mary, and
she, dear little innocent, seemed wonderfully sober, too. I said,
"Wouldn't you like to vote as well as Oliver? Don't you and I
love the country just as well as he, and doesn't the country need
our ballots?" Then she looked scared, but answered, in a minute,
" 'Course we do, and 'course we ought, - but don't you go ahead
and say so, for then we would be called strong-minded."
Last
updated: 4th March, 2002
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