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- FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD, the subject of this sketch,
- needs no introduction to the readers of this work, for her
reputation is world-wide. She comes of a long and prominent line
of New England ancestors, one of them an early settler of Concord,
Mass.; one a president, another a vice- president of Harvard;
one a pastor of the Old South Church, of Boston; one the architect
of Bunker Hill Monument; one, Elijah WILLARD, a chaplain throughout
the Revolutionary War. He was forty years pastor of the Baptist
Church at Dublin, Near Keene, N.H. Josiah Flint WILLARD, grandson
of the latter, and father of Frances, was born in Wheelock, Caledonia
Co., Vt., Nov. 7, 1805. When ten years old he went with his father's
family to Ogden, Monroe Co., N.Y. Here he lived on a farm, taught
school, was clerk in a store and had a cabinetmaker's
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- establishment until in 1841, having laid up money enough
to warrant him in so doing, he removed with his little family
to Oberlin, Ohio, for the purpose of becoming a student at Oberlin
College. He was married, Nov. 4, 1831, to Mary Thompson HILL,
daughter of Deacon John HILL, of Ogden. She was born Jan. 3,
1805, at Danville, near St. Johnsbury, Vt., and was brought up
in the same neighborhood with Mr. WILLARD at Ogden. She began
to be a teacher at fifteen, and taught eleven summers and seven
winters. As above noted Mr. and Mrs. W. went with their children,
Oliver and Frances, to Oberlin, Ohio, and invested five years
in academic and college studies, then removed, in May, of 1846,
to Wisconsin, with their three children (Mary of Nineteen Beautiful
Years, having been born in Oberlin, March 5, 1846.) Mrs. WILLARD
led an isolated life for twelve years, on the farm "Forest
Home," three miles down the river from Janesville. Her daughter
has given an extended account of this remarkable mother's method
of rearing and training her children, in her book entitled "Glimpses
of Fifty Years." Mrs. WILLARD seems to have had a genius
for motherhood. She was a Congregationalist in sentiment, and
belonged to that church here. Since 1858 she has lived in Evanston
with her daughter Frances, encouraging and abetting all of the
latter's work to the utmost, writing occasionally for the press,
making temperance scrap-books, etc. At seventy years of age she
was President of the W.C.T.U., of Evanston, and at eighty-three
a delegate to its National Convention. In her eighty-fifth year
she is hale and hearty, with no faculty or sense abated in clearness,
and bid fair to exceed the age of her grandmother-ninety seven
years.
- Josiah Flint WILLARD was always delicate, physically, but
possessed a strong and active
- intellect. He joined the Free-Soil party at its birth, and
was elected to the Legislature in 1848. There were then but thirteen
Free-Soilers in that body, but he was on the leading committees,
and helped secure the Institution for the Blind at Janesville,
and was one of its Board of Trustees from 1852 to 1858. He was
nominated for State Treasurer, but was defeated. He was several
years President of the Rock County Fair, and of the State Agricultural
Society. In 1859 he introduced Abraham Lincoln, who addressed
the multitude at the State Fair, in Milwaukee. When President
of the Rock County Agricultural Society his leg was broken by
the kick of a horse while on the ground, but he refused to leave,
and sat on the stand while Matt. CARPENTER read the address he
was too weak to stand up and give himself. Mr. WILLARD was a
prominent officer in the First Methodist Episcopal Church throughout
his twelve years' residence in Janesville. He was the leading
horticulturist of the county, and his farm took the premium at
the County Fair. He was the earliest historian of Rock County,
having brought out a book (as collaborator with the Hon. Z. P.
BURDICK), of which copies still remain. He was for many years
one of the band of Smithsonian Weather Observers, upon whose
studies the present Signal Service is founded. He removed to
Evanston, Ill., in November, 1858, for the education of his daughters,
and went into business as commission merchant in Chicago, with
J. W. STOREY, of Janesville, and subsequently into the banking
business with S. A. KEAN, the firm becoming later on PRESTON,
WILLARD & KEAN, bankers, Washington Street. He was one of
the town trustees of Evanston, and prominent in church affairs
and village improvements. He died of consumption, after one year's
illness, Jan. 24, 1868, and is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery,
Chicago.
- Frances E. WILLARD was born at Churchville, near Rochester,
N.Y., Sept. 28, 1839. In a
- story entitled "Three Children and How They Amused Themselves,"
and in the memoir of her sister, "Nineteen Beautiful Years,"
Miss WILLARD has given many pleasing pictures of her childhood.
Oliver was older, Mary younger than Frances. Their parents were
their companions and playmates, as well as their teachers, and
made life at "Forest Home," as they called the farm,
so delightful, that the children seem never to have known an
irksome hour.
- Besides the usual amusements of country children they had
many plays peculiar to themselves,
- the outgrowth of their circumstances and of the actively
intellectual life of father and mother. Their farm was to them
a city, with streets and public buildings, where they held temperance
and political meetings, and celebrated National events. They
had a weekly paper, an art club, established with due formalities,
and a studio in which to hold quarterly exhibitions, "for
the purpose of cultivating the tastes of any who might attend,
and also in the expectation that we might, at these exhibitions,
dispose of any works of art, such as sketches, paintings or statuettes
modeled in clay, which we should be able to furnish to the "public"
- the public being mother, brother, and now and then a friendly
visitor.
- Both Mr. and Mrs. WILLARD had been teachers, and until Frances
was twelve years old, they
- were the children's sole instructors. A governess then assisted
in their education for two years, at the end of which time a
school-house was built near the river. Two or three years of
school life here were followed by a term in the Woman's College
at Milwaukee. The family soon afterward removed to Evanston,
Ill, where the girls graduated from the Northwestern Woman's
College. The elder sister became a teacher; the younger died
in 1862, and their father a few years later. Miss WILLARD taught
in the Woman's College at Pittsburgh, was Preceptress of the
Genesee Wesleyan Seminary at Lima, N.Y., and Professor of Science
in the Womans' College at Evanston. After her father's death,
in 1868, she spent two years in travel through Europe and the
East, and while absent was correspondent of the Independent,
the Christian Union, and others papers in New York and Chicago.
On her return she was elected Dean of the Evanston Woman's College,
and Professor of Esthetics in the Northwestern University. Her
success as a teacher was great, her influence over her pupils
extraordinary. "What are you going to do in the world?"
was her oft-asked question. Her aim was to develop character,
to reveal to each pupil her special powers, and to cultivate
a love of going and doing one's best always. She appeared before
the world as a public speaker first in an address at a women's
missionary meeting in Chicago, producing so profound an impression
that the way opened immediately for the fullest opportunities
in this direction throughout the Northwest. In 1874 she was invited
to work with the W.C.T.U. At a convention held at Cleveland,
in November of that year, the National W.C.T.U. was organized,
Miss WILLARD being made Corresponding Secretary. From this time
forth she could well cry, "My life is devoted;" for
all the powers of her being have been lavishly poured forth in
the service of humanity, through the methods and activities of
the temperance reform.
- The Crusade spirit is embodied in the National W.C.T.U.,
which numbers 10,000 local unions,
- with a following of nearly 200,000 members. Miss WILLARD
has been connected with it from the beginning, either as Corresponding
Secretary, Vice-President or President. She has now been for
eight years at its head, and has given "labors abundant"
in its service. The annals of that unexampled year, in which
she visited every State and Territory in the United States, organizing
on that tour all the outlying States and Territories of the new
Northwest, are written in the heart of every lover of the W.C.T.U.
She has made five trips to the South, and was the pioneer temperance
worker of that region.
- In 1883 Miss WILLARD founded the world's Woman's Christian
Temperance Union, its object
- the formation of "a world-wide organization of all women
interested in any form of temperance, or social purity, or any
other branch of Christian, philanthropic, or reformatory work
throughout the whole world, without respect to nationality, class
or creed. It is not intended that this federation shall hamper
or control in any way the plans or actions of any society or
individual, but that it shall simply unite them all into one
common organization for the better furtherance of the purpose
that animates each." Miss WILLARD is President of the United
States of this society. She is also actively interested in the
societies for the promotion of personal purity, and the "protections
and guidance of those weaker, than ourselves," and has written
several tracts, White Cross and Silver Shield, Social Purity
Work, For God and Native Land, in furtherance of these aims.
She was one of the seven members of the Central Executive Committee
of the Prohibition party. In 1888 she was elected President of
the Woman's National Council of the United States, organized
on the 31st of March, "the largest venture ever attempted
by women, and meant to include all other societies." The
general officers of this organization are, besides the President,
a Vice- President, a Corresponding and Recording Secretary, and
a treasurer. Miss Susan B. ANTHONY, of New York, Mrs. May Write
SEWELL of Indiana, Miss Mary F. EASTMAN of Massachusetts, and
Mrs. M. Louis THOMAS of New York are the present officers. Each
president of an auxiliary society is ex-officio vice-president
of the National Council, and the president of the National Council
is ex-officio vice-president of the International council.
- In May, 1888, Miss WILLARD was one of five women chosen by
the Lay Electoral
- Conferencesas delegates to the General Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church held in New York. After long discussion
they were refused admission by a small majority, "on the
ground that the constitutional law of the church does not provide
for the reception of women," and the question of eligibility
was referred to the Annual Conferences. In the discussion by
which this decision was reached the women had no voice.
- Miss WILLARD is one of the editors of Our Day, and is author
of Nineteen Beautiful Years,
- amemorial of her sister Mary, published in 1864; of Woman
and Temperance (1883), consisting of biographical sketches of
women workers in the cause of temperance; of How to Win; a book
for Girls (1886), and Woman in the Pulpit (1888), a strong argument
for the ecclesiastical equality of women, introduced by letters
from the Rev. Dr. Joseph PARKER, the Rev. Dr. TALMAGE, and Joseph
COOK. It also contains a counter-argument by the Rev. Dr. Henry
J. VAN DYKE, Sr., and a reply by the Rev. Dr. L. T. TOWNSEND,
in support of Miss WILLARD's position. She is also the author
of Glimpses of Fifty Years, undoubtedly the crowning work of
her life, brought out in the spring of 1889, and which is having
an enormous sale.
- "As a public speaker," says James Clement AMBROSE,
in Potter's American Month, "I think
- Miss WILLARD is without a peer among women. With much of
the Edward Everett in her language, there is more of the Wendell
Phillips in her manner of delivery. She is wholly at home, but
not forward on the platform, with grace in bearing, ease and
moderation in gesture, and in her tones there are tears when
she wills. It is the voice books call 'magnetic' - a spell is
in it to please and carry away. It is musical and mellow, never
thin, and on an exceptionally distinct articulation, winds away
to remotest listeners as sounds from the silvery bells of the
Sabbath. Altogether she wears the emphasis of gentleness under
profound conviction.
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-
- Taken from "The Portrait and Biographical Album of
Rock County, Wis." (c)1889, pp. 735-737; lithograph from
same book.
-
- Courtesy of Carol
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