Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

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Willard, Frances Elizabeth 1839-1898

Reformer; born in Churchville, N. Y., Sept. 28, 1839; graduated at the Northwestern Female College in 1858; was for some years a school-teacher in various Western towns, and taught the natural sciences in the Northwestern College. In 1867 she became preceptress in the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, at Lima, N. Y. On Feb. 14, 1871, she was elected president of [370] the college which had recently been established in connection with the Northwestern University of the Methodist denomination, in deference to the popular idea of the co-education of the sexes. It was the first time such an honor was conferred upon a woman. On her return from an extended foreign tour in Europe, Syria, and Egypt, in 1871, Miss Willard lectured with success, in Chicago, on the Educational aspects of the woman question. She was president of the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union from 1879 till her death; founded the World's Christian Temperance Union in 1883; became president of the American branch of the international council of women in 1888; and was chief of the women's committee on temperance meetings at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. She died in New York City, Feb. 18, 1898.