Jane Addams was born on September 6, 1860, in Cedarville, Illinois, the youngest of eight
children. Her father was active in
politics, and her family was prosperous and came from colonial New England. Her father, John Huey Addams, was an
agricultural businessman with large timber, cattle, and agricultural holdings;
he also owned flour and timber mills and a woolen factory as well as being
president of The Second National Bank of Freeport. Her mother, Sarah Weber Addams,
died when Jane was two years old; her father married Anna Hostetter Haldeman,
the widow of a miller in Freeport when Jane was eight years old. Four of her siblings died in infancy and
another died at age 16 – all before Jane was eight years old.
John Huey Addams was a founding
member of the Republican Party in Illinois and was an Illinois State Senator
(1855-70). He was a friend of Abraham
Lincoln and supported him in his campaign for senator (1854) and President
(1860). “He kept a letter from Lincoln
in his desk, and Jane Addams loved to look at it as a child.”
Jane was four years old when she
contracted tuberculosis of the spine – Potts’s disease – and suffered from a
curvature in her spine and health problems for the rest of her life. She walked with a limp and could not run very
well; in addition, she considered herself ugly.
In spite of all her problems, her father adored her.
Jane “was a voracious reader;” from
her mother’s example and from Dickens she became interested in living and
working among the poor. Her father
encouraged her to become better educated but stay close to home. She wanted to attend Smith College in
Massachusetts, but her father made her attend Rockford Female Seminary (now
Rockford University) in Rockford, Illinois.
She graduated from Rockford in 1881 and hoped to earn “a proper B.A.”
from Smith.
John Addams died suddenly that
summer from appendicitis, leaving each of his children $50,000 (“equivalent to
$1.22 million today”). Anna Haldeman
Addams, Jane Addams, Alice Addams, and Alice’s husband Harry moved to
Philadelphia that fall in order for the three young people to study medicine
for two years. Harry, already trained in
medicine, studied at the University of Pennsylvania. Jane and Alice completed one year at the
Woman’s Medical College of Philadelphia; Jane was disappointed because she
could not complete her degree due to “health problems, a spinal operation and a
nervous breakdown.”
Stepmother Anna became ill, and
the entire family returned to Cedarville.
Harry – Jane’s brother-in-law as well as stepbrother – operated on her
back in an effort to straighten it. He
then advised her to travel instead of returning to school. Jane left in August 1883 on a two-year tour
of Europe with her stepmother; friends and family members sometimes joined
them. She realized she could help the
poor without being a doctor. Anna and Jane
returned home in June 1887; they lived together in Cedarville and spent the
winters in Baltimore.
Jane Addams “was a pioneer American
settlement social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader
in women’s suffrage and world peace. In
an era when presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson identified
themselves as reformers and social activists, Addams was one of the most
prominent reformers of the Progressive Era.
She helped turn America to issues of concern to mothers, such as the
needs of children, local public health, and world peace. She said that if women were to be responsible
for cleaning up their communities and making them better places to live, they
needed to be able to vote to do so effectively.
Addams became a role model for middle-class women who volunteered to
uplift their communities. She is
increasingly being recognized as a member of the American pragmatist school of
philosophy. In 1889 she co-founded Hull
House, and in 1920 she was a co-founder for the ACLU. In 1931 she became the first American woman
to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized as the founder of the
social work profession in the United States.”
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