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Frances Elizabeth Willard

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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FRANCES ELIZABETH WILLARD (1839-1898), American reformer, was born at Churchville, Monroe county, New York, on the 28th of September 1839. She attended the Milwaukee Female College in 1857 and in 1859 graduated at the Northwestern Female College at Evanston, Illinois. She then became a teacher, and in 1871-1874 she was president and professor of aesthetics of the Woman's College at Evanston, which became part of the North-Western University in 1873. In 1874 she became corresponding secretary and from 1879 until her death was president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and from 1887 until her death was president of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She first spoke in favour of woman's suffrage in 1877; and in 1884 she was a member of the Executive Committee of the Prohibition party. In 1890 she was elected president of the Woman's National Council, which represented nearly all of the women's societies in America. She was one of the founders of Our Union, a New York publication in the interests of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and of the Signal (after 1882 the Union Signal ), which she edited in 1892-1898 and which was the Illinois organ of the union. She died in New York City on the 18th of February 1898.

With Mary A. Livermore she edited A Woman of the Century (Buffalo, N.Y., 1893), which includes a sketch of her life; and she published Nineteen Beautiful Years (1864), a life of her sister; How to Win: A Book for Girls (1886), Glimpses of Fifty Years (1889), and, in collaboration with H. M. Winslow, Mrs S. J. White and others, Occupations for Women (1897). See A. A. Gordon, The Beautiful Life of Frances E. Willard (Chicago, 1898), with an introduction by Lady Henry Somerset, and W. M. Thayer, Women Who Win (New York, 1896).

1 The law of Holland will be found set out in_ the case. It_is in general accordance with that of France.