Addams, Jane (1860-1935)

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Participated in (25)
Member of (20)
Written by (6053)
Received by (5954)
Mentioned in (592)
Participated in (4)
Member of (1)
Related to (3)
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Annual Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (Fourth) (1912)

Chicago Industrial Exhibit (1907)

Chicago Stockyard Strike (1904)

General Federation of Women's Clubs Biennial Proceedings (1918)

International Congress of Women (1915)

International Congress of Women (1919)

International Congress of Women (1921)

Meeting of the Executive Board of the Woman's Peace Party (Sixteenth) (1917)

National American Woman Suffrage Convention (1907)

National American Woman Suffrage Convention (1912)

National Conference on Tuberculosis (1918)

National Education Association Convention (1918)

Progressive Party Convention (1912)

Terms of Peace Meeting, Chicago (1917)

United States Section of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom Disarmament Meeting (1921)

First Universal Races Congress Delegates Outside the Imperial Institute, London

Universal Races Congress (First) (1911)

University of Chicago Convocation (1904)

WILPF International Summer School (1924)

Women's Constructive Peace Conference (1915)

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, United States Section, Annual Meeting (1930)

American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL)

American Commission on Conditions in Ireland

American Committee for the Relief of Russian Women and Children

American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology

Association of Friends of the University of Vilnius

Citizen's Anti-Crime Committee

International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (ICWPP)

League for the Protection of Immigrants

National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA)

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education

National Women's Trade Union League (NWTUL)

The Committee for the Extension of Municipal Suffrage for Chicago Women

Cover,Charities and the Commons, January 2, 1909

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)

Jane Addams to Richard Theodore Ely, January 10, 1901

Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, January 10, 1901

Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, January 14, 1901

Jane Addams to Stella R. Sax, January 14, 1901

Jane Addams to Anita McCormick Blaine, January 17, 1901

Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, January 30, 1901

In Memory of Alzina Parsons Stevens, February 1901

Jane Addams, "In memory of Alzina Parsons Stevens," February 1901

Jane Addams to Florence Kelley, February 1, 1901

Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, February 3, 1901

Jane Addams to William Vaughan Moody, February 9, 1901

Jane Addams to Florence Kelley, February 10, 1901

Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, February 14, 1901

What is the Greatest Menace to Twentieth Century Progress?, February 14, 1901

One Menace to the Century, February 14, 1901

Jane Addams to Charles Hammond Blatchford, February 17, 1901

Jane Addams to Charles Hammond Blatchford, February 19, 1901

Jane Addams to Richard Theodore Ely, February 26, 1901

Jane Addams to Anita McCormick Blaine, February 28, 1901

Jane Addams to Henry Carter Adams, March 6, 1901

Jane Addams to Esther Margaret Linn, March 18, 1901

Jane Addams, financial statement from sale of Storm Lake property, March 18, 1901

Jane Addams to Anita McCormick Blaine, March 21, 1901

Jane Addams to Anita McCormick Blaine, March 22, 1901

Jane Addams to Anita McCormick Blaine, April 1, 1901

Jane Addams to Samuel M. Jones, April 8, 1901

Jane Addams to Charles Hammond Blatchford, April 11, 1901

Jane Addams to Richard Theodore Ely, April 21, 1901

Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, April 22, 1901

Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, April 25, 1901

Jane Addams to Mary Rozet Smith, April 25, 1901

Jane Addams to Mary Rozet Smith, April 27, 1901

Jane Addams to Mary Rozet Smith, April 28, 1901

Jane Addams to Mary Rozet Smith, April 30, 1901

Jane Addams to Sarah Anderson Ainsworth, May 6, 1901

Jane Addams to Phebe Sutliff, May 9, 1901

Jane Addams to Richard Theodore Ely, May 3, 1903

Jane Addams to Lillian Wald, May 19, 1903

Jane Addams to Cora Bussey Hillis, May 22, 1903

Jane Addams to Florence Kelley, May 22, 1903

Jane Addams to Anita McCormick Blaine, May 23, 1903

Jane Addams to Raymond Robins, May 23, 1903

Jane Addams to Mabel Hay Barrows, June, 1903

Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, June 5, 1903

Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman, June 20, 1903

Jane Addams to Raymond Robins, June 21, 1903

Jane Addams to Raymond Robins, June 24, 1903

Elective or Appointive School Board, February 1, 1906

Effect of Familiarity, September 5, 1907

Addams to Breasted 1-31-1914-page-001.jpg

Jane Addams to James Henry Breasted, January 31, 1914

Browse all documents Written by "Addams, Jane (1860-1935)"

Richard Theodore Ely to Jane Addams, January [11-30?], 1901

Mary Dorsey Anderson Hill to Jane Addams, January 23, 1901

Jenkin Lloyd Jones to Jane Addams, February 11, 1901

William Vaughn Moody to Jane Addams, February 12, 1901

Frederick H. Rowe to Jane Addams, February 13, 1901

Frederic Harrison to Jane Addams, February 15, 1901

Frederic Harrison to Jane Addams, February 25, 1901

Richard Theodore Ely to Jane Addams, February 28, 1901

Henry Carter Adams to Jane Addams, March 7, 1901

Jacob A. Riis to Jane Addams, March 9, 1901

Edmund Janes James to Jane Addams, March 14, 1901

Peytr Kropotkin to Jane Addams, March 14, 1901

Emma Goldman to Jane Addams, April 7, 1901

Richard Theodore Ely to Jane Addams, April 19, 1901

Rollin Lynde Hartt to Jane Addams, April 27, 1901

James Weber Linn to Jane Addams, April 28, 1901

Sophia Engel Van Dine to Jane Addams, April 16, 1902

Samuel Milton Jones to Jane Addams, April 25, 1902

Macmillan Company account statement for Democracy and Social Ethics, May 1902-April 1903

Henry Joseph Warren to Jane Addams, May 4, 1902

William Stone Booth to Jane Addams, May 29, 1902

Vida Dutton Scudder to Jane Addams, June 13, 1902

Anne Murphy to Jane Addams, June 21, 1902

Alice North Lincoln to Jane Addams, June 29, 1902

Richard Theodore Ely to Jane Addams, July 5, 1902

Louise E. Bolard More to Jane Addams, July 16, 1902

Richard Theodore Ely to Jane Addams, July 21, 1902

Edward B. Nitchie to Jane Addams, July 23, 1902

Richard Theodore Ely to Jane Addams, July 26, 1902

Alice Hamilton to Jane Addams, August 1, 1902

Samuel Milton Jones to Jane Addams, August 15, 1902

Georgiana Winthrop Robinson Storer to Jane Addams, ca. September 10, 1902

Macmillan Company, Annual Statement of Royalty Account, April 30, 1903

Lena C. Leland to Jane Addams, May 7, [1903]

Edward Howard Griggs to Jane Addams, June 19, 1903

Macmillan Company to Jane Addams, July 22, 1903

Myron Eugene Adams to Jane Addams, September 1903?

Elizabeth Thacher Kent to Jane Addams, September 20, [1903-1905?]

Albert C. McFarland to Jane Addams, September 24, 1903

Mr. Eastman to Jane Addams, September 25, 1903

Victor Fremont Lawson to Jane Addams, September 26, 1903

Victor Fremont Lawson to Jane Addams, October 3, 1903

Albert G. Beaunisne to Jane Addams, October 6, 1903

John F. Atkinson to Jane Addams, October 7, 1903

Samuel Milton Jones to Jane Addams, October 12, 1903

Western Starr to Jane Addams, October 15, 1903

Frank Brett Noyes to Jane Addams, October 19, 1903

Patrick Geddes to Jane Addams, October 23, 1903

Jenkin Lloyd Jones to Jane Addams, November 4, 1903

Thusnelda Peemoller to Jane Addams, November 18, 1903

Browse all documents Received by "Addams, Jane (1860-1935)"

Mary Rozet Smith to Florence Kelley, October 22, 1901

The Message of a Good Woman: Review of Democracy and Social Ethics, April 16, 1902

Employer and Employee, August 25, 1902

Richard Theodore Ely to Alice Hamilton and Jane Addams, May 11, 1904

Degree for Jane Addams, May 31, 1904

Mary Rozet Smith to Lillian D. Wald, ca. June [15-28?], 1904

Aylmer Maude to Mary Rozet Smith, August 2, 1904

Women's Peace Meeting, October 22, 1904

Mary Rozet Smith to Florence Kelley, October 15, 1905

Cordenio A. Severance to James A. Tawney, January 9, 1906

Charles Patrick Neill to Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, January 29, 1906

James Albertus Tawney to Sophonisba P. Breckinridge, January 31, 1906

Benjamin Barr Lindsey to Julian William Mack, June 18, 1906

Rockefeller Millions for Children Spurned, June 25, 1906

H. O. Hammond to Christian Socialist Editor, ca. 1907

Pledge of Mrs. W. C. Dennes to Abstain from Using Intoxicating Liquors, November 15, 1907

Irving Fisher to American Association for the Advancement of Science, April 22, 1908

John Sanborn Phillips to Ida Minerva Tarbell, May 7, 1908 (fragment)

Unknown (B. F.) to the Editor of the New York Evening Post, May 29, 1908

Charles Fremont Amidon to Andrew A. Bruce, July 24, 1908

National Conference of Charities and Corrections, The National Bulletin, November 12, 1908 (excerpts)

Irene Osgood, Receipt, November 19, 1908

Discuss Negroes Yearly, June 2, 1909

William James to William Isaac Thomas (fragment), [December 27, 1909]

Theodore Dreiser to James Edward West, June 30, 1910

Waldo Ralph Browne to Louise de Koven Bowen, August 10, 1910

Frohman for Sunday Plays, September 4, 1910

Gino Speranza, Outline of proposed work for the Committee on Crime and Immigration, January 18, 1911

Woman's Home Mission Review of Twenty Years at Hull-House, February 1911

A Tribute to Miss Addams, February 22, 1911

Sophonisba P. Breckinridge to Noah Baxter Feagin, April 3, 1911

Benjamin Barr Lindsey to Owen Reed Lovejoy, April 10, 1911

Benjamin Barr Lindsey to Julia Clifford Lathrop, August 24, 1911

Benjamin Barr Lindsey to Julia Clifford Lathrop, October 24, 1911

Interview with Mrs. Anna V. Morrison, December 26, 1911

Isaac N. Seligman to Lillian D. Wald, 1912

A New Conscience and An Ancient Evil Newspaper Advertisement, April 17, 1912

Louise de Koven Bowen to Crystal Eastman, April 23, 1912

At Last a Genuinely Independent Newspaper, ca. August 1912

Statement on Woman Suffrage, Progressive Party, [August] 1912

The Deserted Negro, August 1912

Wallace Thayer to the Editor, August [8], 1912

Mary Rozet Smith to Ada Lois James, September 24, 1912

The Song of the Child-Slaves, ca. October 1912

The Song of the Child Slaves, ca. October 1912

Margaret Dreier Robins to Frances Alice Kellor. October 9, 1912

Jane Addams' Speech for the Progressive Party announcement, October 17, 1912

Browse all documents that mention "Addams, Jane (1860-1935)"

All Chicago Liberty Demonstration (1920)

Jane Addams's Emergency Breast Surgery (1923)

Western Drawing and Manual Training Teachers Association

U.S.S.R. Society of Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries

Chicago Teamsters' Strike (1905)

Knapp, Valeria Addams (1830-1914)

National Federation of Settlements

Comments

Birth Date

1860-09-06

Death Date

1935-05-21

Birthplace

Cedarville, IL

Biographical Text

Laura Jane Addams was born in 1860 to affluent parents, John Huy Addams and Sarah Weber Addams in Cedarville, IL, Her mother died when she was only two years old, and her father remarried in 1868. Addams was a bright child who was tutored by her father. Jane Addams enrolled in Rockford Female Seminary in 1877 and excelled in her studies. She was recognized as a leader at the College, serving as class president for four years and as valedictorian at her 1881 graduation. Addams had hopes to go to Smith College and eventually to medical school and to serve society, but the 1881 death of her father changed her circumstances.

Addams instead was needed at home, to serve as a companion for her step-mother, Anna Haldeman Addams. The pair moved to Philadelphia where Addams attempted to pursue her dream at the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia, but she was unable to do so. She traveled abroad with her step-mother, studying language and art history, but found herself in a depression as societal roles pressed upon her plans for her future.

During her years after college, Addams developed her ideas about democracy, charity, and class that helped inform her work with Hull-House. In 1888 Addams toured Europe again, this time with her Rockford College friend, Ellen Gates Starr, where the two came upon the "settlement house" Toynbee Hall for the first time. Addams and Starr determined to create their own settlement house in Chicago, using much of Addams's inheritance from her father to fund the effort. They located a site, in Chicago's 19th Ward, and set up Hull-House in 1889, offering classes and services to their immigrant neighbors.

At Hull-House, Addams worked together to make the settlement a success. Starr focused on the administrative work while Addams was the public face of the settlement. Addams sought assistance from the influential Chicago Women's Club, and rapidly became known in the city for her useful works. She attracted volunteers and financial support for her work, which she used to provide more services to her neighbors.

Addams was a prolific writer and she wrote about the benefits the settlement work brought to the middle-class workers and well as to the neighbors, gaining a reputation as a progressive thinker that made Hull-House the best known settlement, albeit one that's democratic character made it unique in its operation. Hull-House created a place where social reform activists, chiefly, but not solely women, were able to collaborate and make effective change in laws, economics, and health care.

Addams built relationships with wealthy funders, such as Louise de Koven Bowen and Mary Rozet Smith that helped to expand Hull-House's capabilities far past what her own limited wealth could support. Addams used Hull-House as a pulpit from which she could attempt to change the way society treated workers and the less fortunate. After 1900 she became increasingly involved in city, and then national politics and became a well-traveled and sought-after speaker.

Addams had a rich writing career, taking her lectures and editing them into a series of topical books. She published:

Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), Newer Ideals of Peace (1907), The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909), Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes (1910), A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912), The Long Road of Woman’s Memory, (1916), Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922), The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House, September 1909 to September 1929, With a Record of a Growing Consciousness (1930), The Excellent Becomes the Permanent (1932), and My Friend, Julia Lathrop. New York: Macmillan (1935).

Addams sometimes found the practical application of her theories difficult because there was no shared goal amongst activists. Addams served on the Chicago Board of Education from 1905-1909, finding that putting her theories on mediation into practical use were difficult. She found it difficult to deal with partisans who had no taste for compromise. When she became involved in the suffrage movement, Addams likewise avoided supporting any of the warring factions in the movement, staying above the fray. In 1912, Addams was briefly drawn into politics, when she supported Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party campaign for president, but after his defeat she withdrew from active participation.

With the outbreak of World War I, Addams's strong and consistent calls for peace put her in the public spotlight. She called for mediation between the warring countries, not armed conflict and did not adjust her rhetoric when the United States entered the war. Addams was accused of being a partisan, a traitor, or a naive fool, but she ignored all attacks and threw herself into organizing for peace. Addams worked with other women in the United States and abroad to lobby for peace, with the Woman's Peace Party and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Addams believed that peace was a reform that women saw in a unique way and underscored her conviction that women needed an equal say in politics and society.

Addams devoted the remainder of her public life to peace activism, though she maintained her work with Hull-House throughout her life. She worked to support and publicize the work of peace organizations around the world, traveling around the world and working with women's organizations to encourage activism.

In 1931, Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (sharing the award with Nicholas Murray Butler), a vindication of her stalwart support for peace in the trying circumstances surrounding the war. By this time, Addams was winding down, her many health problems taking a toll on her ability to be as active as she once was. Addams died of abdominal cancer on May 21, 1935.

Addams never married; instead she had a life-long romantic attachment to Mary Rozet Smith. The two women were constant companions, traveled together and expressed their love in letters.

Map

Edited By

Hajo, Cathy Moran

Rights

Public domain

Gender

Female

First appears

1901

Bibliography and Links

Mary Lynn Bryan, The Selected Papers of Jane Addams (2003-2009)

SNAC

Victoria Bissell Brown, "Jane Addams," Women Building Chicago, 1790-1990 (2001), pp. 14-22.

Citation

“Addams, Jane (1860-1935),” Jane Addams Digital Edition, accessed November 16, 2025, https://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/5.

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