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Jane Addams Research Paper

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Jane (Laura) Addams was born to Sarah (Weber) Addams and John Huy Addams on September 16, 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois near Rockford and Wisconsin border. She was the eighth of nine children. From this union out of the nine children only three of the daughters and one son survived to see adulthood. Jane was two years of age when her mother died. Sarah Addams had a fatal accident in the course of assisting her neighbor. The neighbor of the Addams family enlisted the help of Sarah in delivering her child. Upon Sarah’s return home; she fell. Her injuries resulted in her passing away a week later. A noted landowner, miller, industrialist, legislator, and war hero John Huy Addams served in the Civil War and sixteen years as a state senator …show more content…

Jane went to Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia in the fall of 1882. Later in the 1880’s Jane traveled to Europe where she visited a settlement house by the name of Toynbee Hall. Settlement houses were the country’s way of providing community services to the poor. Addams and her friend, Ellen Gates Starr, the Hull House in the lower income section of Chicago in 1889. Most of the residents who lived there were from countries such as Italy, Russia, Poland, Germany, Ireland, and Greece. Hull House provided a day care center for children of working mothers, a community kitchen, and visiting nurses. Addams and her staff gave classes in English literacy, art, and other subjects. Hull House also became a meeting place for clubs and labor unions. Most of the people who worked with Addams in Hull House were well educated, middle-class women. Hull House gave them an opportunity to use their education and it provided a training ground for careers in social work. Jane Addams was a strong champion of several other causes. Until 1920, American women could not vote. Addams joined in the movement for women's suffrage (women's right to vote). She was a vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Addams was also a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

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