Dear California Daughters,
March is Women’s History Month, when the contributions of women to history and to contemporary society are highlighted and celebrated. For 2015, the month’s theme is “Weaving the Stories of Women’s Lives.” As we celebrate the 125th anniversary of the founding of DAR, March is an opportune time to focus on one of DAR’s Dazzling Daughters, the list of 120 DAR members who have made significant and positive contributions to American or international culture, society, or history through diligent application of their unique talents and abilities.
Included with such notables as Caroline Scott Harrison and Susan B. Anthony is Frances E. Willard. She is considered one of the most prominent women of the 19th century. She was an educator, a crusader for women’s suffrage, a reformer. After serving as president of Evanston College for Ladies, she left academia in 1874 to follow her passion of social reform, namely establishing the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She fought for other social issues—prison reform, orphan care, homelessness, and prostitution. Miss Willard supported labor’s struggle for an 8-hour work day. She was incensed that women could not vote and crusaded mightily for women’s rights.
In 1875, she was the first alumna initiate of my sorority, Alpha Phi, serving later as our International President. She was a charter member of DAR and remembered at the Memorial Service at the 7th Continental Congress after her death in 1898. She supported the creation of Memorial Continental Hall where “the heroines of our forebears were to be honored for the first time in history.” In 1905 Miss Willard was the first woman to have a statue in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. Later she was featured on the 1940 5-cent stamp. She was a mentor to many.
Two rules were the topic of her writings and speeches: first, work according to your ideals and, second, focus your energies. Her life’s story truly weaves an inspirational tapestry of a role model with an expansive vision of what women can do.
As we celebrate Women’s History Month, join me as we
Celebrate Service…to God, Home, and Country.
Carol Oakley Jackson
California State Regent