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Frances Willard (suffragist)




Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard ( September 28 , 1839 - February 17 , 1898 ) was an
American educator, Temperance reformer, and Women Suffragist .
She was born in Churchville, New York .

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 , averaging 30,000 miles of travel a year, and 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.

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, .


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, {Link without Title} .




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



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