Frances Willard House Museum & Archives
Frances Willard; visionary feminist, political activist & social justice reformer
By Elizabeth Schmidt, Fall 2020 Intern As 2021 begins, many people will make typical New Year’s resolutions to get in shape and become healthier. These resolutions often include a vow to moderate the use of alcohol. This will be particularly meaningful after a year when, due to the pandemic, health was everyone’s main concern, and […]
One of our Executive Director’s favorite non-Willard quotes is “It takes a village.” We approach the end of 2020 with gratitude for everyone who has made our work during this challenging year possible: staff, volunteers, interns, Board and Council members, and supporters far and wide. Without these villagers, we couldn’t have maintained Frances Willard’s “Do Everything” approach at the level we did this year. In this post we focus on […]
By Fiona Maxwell A group of visitors from Sky Island crowded around the fat dictionary on Frances Willard’s bedroom desk. They had found a clue – a mysterious annotation that held the secret to the unknown history of woman’s suffrage on Sky Island. Sky Island is the creation of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade […]
By Hannah Lahti, Remote Summer Intern The social and political reformer Frances Willard remains notable throughout history as a champion of women’s rights and a leader of the nineteenth century’s national reform movement. Historians study the impact of her work to understand the role of women and women’s movements in the fight for women’s […]
By Fiona Maxwell The Frances Willard House is one of the first house museums in the United States dedicated to the life and work of a woman. Upon her death in 1898, Frances Willard willed her home to the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In 1900, the WCTU established its national headquarters in the north side […]
By Kristin Jacobsen, WCTU Archives, Archives Assistant In mid-August, 1874, a group of temperance women came together to seize a national moment that led to formation of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The women were wives of a group of Methodist clergymen who were attending the first National Sunday-School Assembly at Chautauqua Lake in […]
By Cate LiaBraaten, Museum Operations Manager Suffrage, or the right to vote and hold office in political elections, is foundational to democratic societies. 2020 marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that the right to vote shall not be denied on the basis of sex. The 19th Amendment was passed […]
By Fiona Maxwell, University of Chicago Graduate Global Impact Intern Frances Willard’s prominence as an activist, orator, writer, and educator has tended to overshadow many of the other remarkable woman leaders active in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union during the late nineteenth century–including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the National “superintendent for work among the colored […]
By Glen Madeja, Head Gardener The renovated gardens have progressed tremendously so far this year. Based on research done by landscape historian Barbara Geiger funded by a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a work plan had been laid out for the entire property, focused on the gardens surrounding Willard House. Over the […]
By Fiona Maxwell, University of Chicago Graduate Global Impact Intern This is the third installment of a series of blog posts highlighting a small sample of the printed performance materials housed in the WCTU Archives. Although the Museum and Archives are closed to visitors due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are committed to providing digital […]