Frances Willard’s death on February 17, 1898, was marked by four memorial services, nationwide recognition, and a long legacy.
Archive | From the Archives
Launching the “Last Call”: The Women’s Crusade against Alcohol, 1873-1874
by Kristin Jacobsen, Assistant Archivist Patrons nursing their beers in the saloons of Fredonia, New York, on December 15, 1873, were met with a startling sight: more than one hundred local women taking to the streets to prevent drinkers from raising another glass. The women visited all eight liquor dealers in Fredonia – praying, singing […]
Birth of the WCTU: Temperance Women Ride a National Wave
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 […]
Performing Temperance Part I: Temperance “Reciters”
By Fiona Maxwell, University of Chicago Graduate Global Impact Intern This is the first 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 […]
Home at Last
Wide-ranging travel has always been part of the WCTU’s history (think of Frances Willard’s speaking tours, and of the WCTU organizers who collected 7.5 million signatures on the Polyglot Petition in the 1880s). Imagine the warm welcome those women received when they got back home to Evanston! These thoughts came to mind on July 26 […]
The WCTU and WWI
“A Century of Remembering: The Great War” is the theme of Illinois Archives Month (October) 2017. World War I affected every aspect of American society, and is documented in many different ways in archival repositories across the state. The Frances Willard Memorial Library and Archives offers this brief overview of the role played by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. […]
Digging Through History
By Chad Comello Digging through history is a lot like digging through dirt: it’s gonna get messy, but you’ll find some interesting stuff along the way. What is now the archives was once known as the Administration Building, built in 1922 to serve as the WCTU’s bustling headquarters. Now primarily a repository for organizational records, […]
Frances Willard: The Coloring Book
Coloring books for adults do seem to be a thing. They are touted as being beneficial for relaxation, mindfulness, creativity, and even just fun. Realizing that museums and libraries are a hidden source of wonderful, colorable designs, the New York Academy of Medicine Library has launched the second annual #ColorOurCollections week on social media, inviting museums, […]
How They Spent Their Summer Vacations
Great minds think alike, it’s said, and that statement was well illustrated last week in the Willard Archives, when faculty members from three different institutions of higher learning descended on the Archives at the same time. The three professors were doing end-of-summer research on very different projects, but, as is so often the case in […]
“I’ve Been to Dwight!”
Time was when this statement meant that the speaker was a recovering alcoholic making a triumphal return from Dwight, Illinois, after undergoing the famous “Keeley Gold Cure” in that small but bustling town. For me, it means I’m back from a conference of the Alcohol & Drugs History Society (ADHS), held in Dwight from July […]