By Lori Osborne, Frances Willard House Museum Director See Part 1 here for the beginning of the story. North Western Female College thrived in its early years, despite the setbacks of losing its first building to a fire and the multi-year absence of founder William Jones for health issues. It established Evanston as a place … Read more
Elisabeth Heissner is a rising senior at Loyola University of Chicago. Her spring internship with the Frances Willard House Museum & WCTU Archives focused on creating a digital exhibit about the history of WCTU drinking fountains. You can explore the exhibit she created here. During the month of May, Preservation Month, communities around the country … Read more
By Amelia Perkins, Philosophy PhD student, Northwestern University I spent this summer as an intern at the Frances Willard House Museum and WCTU Archives, through Northwestern’s Chicago Humanities Initiative, a program which matches graduate students with Chicago-area organizations seeking summer interns. I applied to CHI with the vague idea that it would be good to get … Read more
By Elizabeth Schmidt, Fall 2020 Intern As 2021 begins, many people will make typical New Year’s resolutions to get in shape and become healthier. These resolutions often include a vow to moderate the use of alcohol. This will be particularly meaningful after a year when, due to the pandemic, health was everyone’s main concern, and … Read more
One of our Executive Director’s favorite non-Willard quotes is “It takes a village.” We approach the end of 2020 with gratitude for everyone who has made our work during this challenging year possible: staff, volunteers, interns, Board and Council members, and supporters far and wide. Without these villagers, we couldn’t have maintained Frances Willard’s “Do Everything” approach at the level we did this year. In this post we focus on … Read more
By Fiona Maxwell A group of visitors from Sky Island crowded around the fat dictionary on Frances Willard’s bedroom desk. They had found a clue – a mysterious annotation that held the secret to the unknown history of woman’s suffrage on Sky Island. Sky Island is the creation of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade … Read more
By Hannah Lahti, Remote Summer Intern The social and political reformer Frances Willard remains notable throughout history as a champion of women’s rights and a leader of the nineteenth century’s national reform movement. Historians study the impact of her work to understand the role of women and women’s movements in the fight for women’s … Read more
By Fiona Maxwell The Frances Willard House is one of the first house museums in the United States dedicated to the life and work of a woman. Upon her death in 1898, Frances Willard willed her home to the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. In 1900, the WCTU established its national headquarters in the north side … Read more
By Cate LiaBraaten, Museum Operations Manager Suffrage, or the right to vote and hold office in political elections, is foundational to democratic societies. 2020 marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that the right to vote shall not be denied on the basis of sex. The 19th Amendment was passed … Read more
By Glen Madeja, Head Gardener The renovated gardens have progressed tremendously so far this year. Based on research done by landscape historian Barbara Geiger funded by a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, a work plan had been laid out for the entire property, focused on the gardens surrounding Willard House. Over the … Read more