Wisconsin Hometown Stories

>> After the Civil War, many of Janesville's women, who had kept businesses and households afloat, and worked tirelessly to support the troops, now worked to continue a women's rights movement that began in the 1850s. >> The rights of women, the right to vote was very popular among ladies in the area. >> Most of the activists in Janesville were also part of the temperance movement, to control the growing problem of post-Civil War alcoholism. >> Temperance was a very, very big issue. The White Anglo-Saxon Protestant emphasis of the New Englanders was countered by the Catholic "Wets" as they were called, the Irish and Germans, who valued their alcoholic beverages. A great many illegal saloons were operating on Sunday and that was a cause of great consternation. >> Interestingly, in Janesville, I think we see the beginning of what becomes a nationwide movement. There is a Janesville group of women in 1873, who are furious. And they march, literally march on City Hall, down the streets of Janesville, women didn't do this sort of thing, and demand that these aldermen who had been elected promising to limit the number of tavern licenses will live up to that promise. Instead they got in office, and who cares, women can't vote, can't hurt the aldermen, started granting licenses right and left. And this is the first women's temperance crusade, actually, that I find. >> Lavinia Goodell, who would go on to become Wisconsin's first woman lawyer, organized the demonstration, and wrote about it in local and national women's newspapers >> I think that's how it gets picked up nationwide. Women are becoming aware of what the Janesville women did, why they did it, and more important, how they did it. This is how you do a petition. This is how you call a meeting. These are things that women are not conversant with at the time. They're not supposed to know these things. In late 1873, and most of 1874, in every state, in every territory, more than 150,000 women nationwide, are marching down streets with petitions they've gotten women to sign. They are singing hymns outside taverns. They are doing all things that Lavinia Goodell and her group did in Janesville. So, this women's temperance crusade sweeps the country, effects a lot of change, empowers a lot of women. And in 1874, they have a convention, as the crusade is winding down. They say, we have to continue this work, and joined together and found the Women's Christian Temperance Union, as we've called it ever since, the WCTU. >> Within five years, the WCTU elected Frances Willard, a former Janesville Resident, to head the national organization. >> Under Frances Willard, first of all, the organization grows phenomenally. It becomes international. It becomes the largest women's organization in the world. She was born in upstate New York, in the area that was called the Burned-Over District. But when she was six or seven, in 1846, her family took up a farm about four miles from Janesville. >> As a strong-willed young girl, Frances Willard complained that she was not allowed to do the same things as her older brother. >> And she and her sister wanted to go to school just like he did. And so she really begged to go to school. The father finally broke down and built the little schoolhouse. >> The Willard Schoolhouse is now preserved on the Rock County Fairgrounds, where hundreds of school children can take a trip back in time. >> The teachers who had been interested in the history of the little school and Frances Willard got together. And they decided that they would invite the third graders at the end of their unit on local history to come in and spend half a day, and go through lessons the way the children did, 153 years ago. >> Frances Willard went on with her schooling, eventually becoming Dean of Women at Northwestern University. It was there she made the crucial decision to devote the rest of her life to the temperance movement. >> And it changes the temperance movement forever. It changes the course of women's history, and therefore this nation's history forever, because of her incredible skills as a speaker, as a writer, as a thinker, as a philosopher. >> Over the years, Willard expanded the temperance movement to include the larger issues of women's rights. >> Frances Willard brings them together. If you became part of the WCTU, you got increasing information that showed you that, mainly, women were not going to be able to affect changes and laws, until they had a voice in the legal structure of this country, until they could vote.