1730 Chicago Ave
Evanston, IL 60201, USA

Frances Willard House (Rest Cottage) - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was born on September 28, 1839, in Churchville, New York. By the time of her death on February 18, 1898, she had raised the temperance movement to national significance and had made the country aware of the social evils of liquor.

Her family moved from New York in 1841 to Oberlin, Ohio because of that community's reputation as an educationally and religiously oriented town, and there both of her parents’ attended college for two years. From there they moved to a farm in Janesville, Wisconsin and finally to Evanston, Illinois. Planning to teach, Miss Willard first attended the Milwaukee Female College and then Northwestern Female College from which she graduated in 1859. She spent two and one-half years traveling and studying abroad at Le Petit Sorbonne· and the University of Paris. In 1871 she received her M.A. from Syracuse University and Ohio Wesleyan College awarded her an LL.D in 1894.

Miss Willard intent in developing her own career and her independent nature had been stimulated in college by her reading about Margaret Fuller Ossoli, whom she greatly admired. Between 1858 and 1874 Frances Willard taught in eleven different institutions and had a total of some 2,000 students. In 1871 she became president of the Evanston College ·or Ladies, a new institution, where she introduced self-government by the students, an innovation in that day. When this college was absorbed by Northwestern University, she became Dean of the Women's College, but resigned in 1874 because of a conflict over the role of women in the university.

Miss Willard's resignation marked a turning point in her 1· e, for her attention now turned to the temperance movement, a tradition in which she had been reared--her father's membership certificate in a temperance society had hung on the wall of their home. She was a Methodist and her basic point of view was one that regarded temperance as a Christian endeavor aimed at preserving the home and family life. While teaching she had continued .to be interested in temperance. As she recorded in her last year of teaching, she had her students discuss and write about subjects concerning prohibitions. Instead of considering whether or not Napoleon was a great man, she had her pupil consider the question “Is prohibition a success?”

Once attracted to the temperance movement, Frances devoted herself entirely to it. Upon returning from the trip to the East in the summer of 1874, she stopped in Pittsburgh and visited her first saloons, In company with other ladies. They sang "Jesus the Water of Life Will Give and Rock of Ages" and prayed. Inspired, she returned to Chicago and became president of the national organization and preside of the World's Woman's Christian temperance upon, in 1879

As Susan B. Anthony had for the suffrage movement, Miss Willard gave the temperance movement organization and direction. She set up sections responsible for curbing the sale of liquor, educating the public about its evils, and lobbying legislatures for anti-saloon laws. Furthermore, she stressed the value of mass meetings, contests, publicity, and literature in the war against the liquor interests. Like other reform crusaders, she also resorted to petitions, and one of them, the polyglot petition," protesting against the widespread sale of whisky and dope, contained 7,000,000 names from throughout the world. Under her leadership the movement established a journal, the Union Signal.

Miss Willard also recognized the value of political action, and she caused the temperance movement to support the suffrage drive, thinking that the ballot could help destroy the power of the whisky lobbies. She even threw the support of her movement behind candidates, supporting James A. Garfield in the election of 1880. But she soon suffered disillusionment in that tactic, for after visiting Garfield in the White House in March 1881, with a delegation of ladies, she wrote:
His manner seemed to us constrained. He was not the brotherly Disciple preacher of old, but the adroit politician "in the hands or. his friends" and perfectly aware that the liquor camp held the balance of power.

When the Republican party convened in 1884, Miss Willard sought a resolution against liquor, but when none was forthcoming, she left the party.

The success of Willard's leadership of the movement is attested to by the formation of the World's Christian Temperance Union in 1883, largely through her efforts. By 1891, the world organization had over 200,000 members. Its first convention met in Boston in 1891, with delegates from more than forty nations in attendance. It was at this time that Frances Willard was elected president of the international organization. The unending work, speaking, and travel took their toll, and from 1892 on, Miss Willard suffered from poor health. She never fully recovered her old zest and died in New York in 1898.

The site is bounded by the west curb of Chicago Avenue on the east and the property line which is about 88 feet long on the east and west and 200 feet long on the north and south borders. The property is located within lot 16, Block 15 in Evanston, a subdivision, Section 18 of Township 41, Range 14.

Frances E Willard House, 1730 Chicago Ave Evanston, Cook County, IL

This house, the home of Frances E. Willard, crusader for education, abolition of the liquor traffic and the rights of women, was built in 1865 by her father. The building shows the influence of the publications of Andrew Jackson Downing, and is also a good example of the early use of concrete in the foundation walls. The house is especially significant since the W.C.T.U. has faithfully preserved the interior and its furnishings just as Miss Willard left it.