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Frances Willard Wikipedia

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Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (1839-1898) was an
United States|American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffrage|women suffragist.

Willard was elected president of United States Woman'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_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution|Eighteenth (Prohibition) and Nineteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution|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.

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, John Greenleaf Whittier, wrote of her: She knew the power of banded ill, But felt that LOVE was stronger still. And organized for doing good, The World's united womanhood.

Last Modified:   2005-12-19