Born in Cedarville, Illinois, on September 6, 1860, Addams graduated from Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford College) in 1881 where her father, John, served as a trustee. With Ellen Gates Starr Addams founded Hull-House on Chicago’s Near West Side in 1889 to address the social problems associated with urbanization, industrialization, and immigration. Settlement houses, like Hull House, attracted individuals to settle in poor urban neighborhoods and seek to ameliorate social ills. By 1911, Chicago had 35. In its early years Hull-House was located in the midst of a densely populated urban neighborhood of Italian, Irish, German, Greek, Bohemian, and Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants. As is often the case with neighborhoods, over the years the demographics changed. By the 1920s Hull House served African Americans and Mexicans neighbors. In her autobiography Addams recounted the influence of her father to be interested in the “moral concerns of life.”

Jane Addams and the Hull-House residents provided kindergarten and day care facilities for the children of working mothers; an employment bureau; an art gallery; libraries; English and citizenship classes; and theater, music and art classes. As the complex expanded to include thirteen buildings, Hull-House supported more clubs and activities such as a Labor Museum, the Jane Club for single working girls, meeting places for trade union groups, and a wide array of cultural events. The Hull-House residents and their supporters forged a powerful reform movement. Among the projects that they helped launch were the Immigrants’ Protective League, the Juvenile Protective Association, the first juvenile court in the nation, and a Juvenile Psychopathic Clinic (later called the Institute for Juvenile Research). Through their efforts, the Illinois Legislature enacted protective legislation for women and children in 1893. With the creation of the Federal Children’s Bureau in 1912 and the passage of a federal child labor law in 1916, the Hull-House reformers saw their efforts expanded to the national level. In addition, she actively supported the campaign for woman suffrage and the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909) and the American Civil Liberties Union (1920). In 1910 she received an honorary doctorate by Yale University–the first ever awarded to a woman by Yale.

Jane Addams spoke at Wheaton College on March 14, 1894. During her career she wrote prolifically on topics related to Hull-House activities, producing eleven books and numerous articles as well as maintaining an active speaking schedule nationwide and throughout the world. She played an important role in many local and national organizations. Despite being attacked by the press and being expelled from the Daughters of the American Revolution, during World War I Addams worked for peace. As a result of her peace work she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

Jane Addams died in Chicago on May 21, 1935. She was buried in Cedarville, her childhood home town.

Wheaton faculty Steve Moshier, David Maas and Jeff Greenberg recently saw the publication of their article on the history of geology at Wheaton College and its engagement with Wheaton’s theological stance and teachings in Geology and Religion: a history of harmony and hostility (Geological Society, London).

Since the college’s founding in 1860, geology has been part of its curriculum. Jonathan Blanchard sought to recruit the best faculty possible and this was true for the natural sciences as it was for the humanities. One of his first recruits was George Frederick Barker, whom Blanchard wanted to teach geology and natural history. Unfortunately, due to a number of circumstances his appointment lasted one year.

As scientific knowledge grew the tensions between science and religion began to grow. These emerged, in some campes, shortly after Darwin’s writings became widely available and taught. Wheaton’s geology faculty respected the geological evidence for an ancient Earth and interpreted Genesis’ telling of creation and its chronology as representing epochs of God’s creative activity. Wheaton’s first faculty member with an earned doctorate was L. Allen Higley, who harmonized mainstream geological history and the Bible through the gap or ruin-restoration interpretation, wherein the epochs of geological time preceded the biblical account of six days of recreation several thousand years ago. Higley and his ideas became a major influence in Wheaton’s interactions with its fundamentalist constituents and its recruiting of new faculty. By the 1930s geology became an established major and an independent department in 1958. Like the study of human origins, geology education at Wheaton has been profoundly influenced by the tension between science and faith in the evangelical sub-culture, causing concern in certain quarters. Wheaton’s faculty and administration have had to address these concerns on numerous occassions since the 1960s.

John Payson Williston, honored on Wheaton’s campus in brick and mortar through the “Women’s Building” built in 1895 and renamed Williston Hall in 1933, was a friend of Jonathan Blanchard. An inventor of indelible ink and a business man in Northampton, Massachusetts, Williston was also an abolitionist who used his financial resources and reputation to help those formerly enslaved to find freedom and better lives.

Williston was like so many other evangelical Congregationalists of his time as he was involved in a variety of social and spiritual reform activities. He was not simply religious nor simply reformist, but he saw the holistic impact of the Gospel of Christ in addressing spiritual and physical needs. For Williston the Gospel was not simply “pie in the sky” or “a chicken in every pot” but a mysterious mixture of the here and now and the hereafter. Williston was involved in the Northampton Association of Education and Industry and served as an agent of the American Tract Society in western Massachusetts. He fought slavery and was a member of the Committee for West Indian Missions.

Williston was known to be a part of the Underground Railroad in Northampton and to employ those seeking freedom in his business operations. Additionally, as seen in the life of David Ruggles, Williston underwrote fines and court costs incurred by those on the front lines of the abolitionist cause (p. 41) (Porter, Dorothy B. “David Ruggles, an Apostle of Human Rights.” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Jan., 1943), pp. 23-50)

Williston also had direct personal involvement in his helping others. He took on the guardianship of William Howard Day, the son of abolitionist Eliza Day and her husband, John. Williston helped him gain skills as a printer in Northampton and then sent him to Oberlin College, from which he graduated in 1847 — the only black graduate in a class of fifty. Day later was elected president of the National Board of Commissioners of the Colored People and helped start Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, a historically black college affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

Williston was a friend to both Knox and Wheaton College. After being presented with the needs of the school by George Washington Gale, Williston’s first gift to Knox was a set of classical books for use by the students. After Blanchard’s election as president of the school his interest in helping fund Knox grew. Williston pulled back his giving as Knox became more secure and landed. Williston was a regular benefactor to Wheaton College. When James Oliver Buswell became president of Wheaton College his also served as the J. P. Williston Professor of Philosophy and Bible.

Williston’s importance in western Massachusetts can be seen not far from Northampton as MountHolyoke College named their observatory after Williston. It was built in 1880 to be ready for the rare transit of Venus in 1882. It is the oldest academic building on their campus. Williston’s brother, Samuel, was instrumental in the founding of Williston Seminary, now Williston Northampton School. Samuel was also a friend and donor to Blanchard’s causes.

John Payson Williston was a business man, reformer, abolitionist, benefactor and compassionate Christian. He took personal and professional risks to help those in need. He made an indelible impression on numerous lives and institutions.