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Jane Addams Facts & Worksheets

Laura Jane Addams was an American settlement organizer, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author.

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Laura Jane Addams was an American settlement organizer, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author who lived from September 6, 1860, until May 21, 1935. In the history of social work and women’s suffrage in the United States, she exercised major leadership.

See the fact file below for more information on Jane Addams, or you can download our 22-page Jane Addams worksheet pack to utilize within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE

  • Jane Addams was the youngest of eight children born into a well-off northern Illinois family of English-American ancestry with roots in colonial Pennsylvania. She was born in Cedarville, Illinois. Sarah Addams (née Weber), Addams’ mother, passed away in 1863 when she was nine months pregnant and Jane was 2 yrs old.  
  • After that, Addams was primarily looked after by her older sisters. Four of Addams’ siblings had passed away by the time she was eight: three when they were infants and one when they were sixteen.
  • Addams played outside, read, and went to Sunday school. She developed Potts’ disease, a form of spinal tuberculosis, when she was four. 
  • This condition curled her spine and left her with permanent health issues. Given that she had a limp and could not run as effectively as the other kids, this made it difficult for her as a child to interact with them.
  • Addams had lofty aspirations of making a significant contribution to society when she was a little girl. She was an avid reader interested in the underprivileged after reading Charles Dickens. 
  • Addams chose to become a doctor so she could live and work among the underprivileged after being moved by his writings and her mother’s generosity to the Cedarville poor.
  • She wanted to go to the new women’s college Smith College in Massachusetts, but her father had her attend the nearby Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford University) in Rockford, Illinois. 
  • While in Rockford, she became greatly influenced by the works of Thomas Carlyle, John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy, and other authors.
  • After returning home in June 1887, she spent the winters in Baltimore while continuing to live with her stepmother in Cedarville. Still filled with hazy ambition, Addams fell into melancholy as she struggled to live the everyday life expected of a wealthy young woman and felt useless doing it. 
  • She frequently discussed Christianity and books in her lengthy letters to Ellen Gates Starr, a friend from Rockford Seminary, but she also occasionally wrote about her misery.

INFLUENCES

  • Here, a few key inspirations are mentioned. While a student at Rockford Seminary, Addams read works by Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881). John Ruskin (1819–1900), who believed that art and culture mirrored society’s moral well-being, also impacted Addams. 
  • Ruskin maintained a certain elitism in his belief that great individuals created great art. Still, he considered such works of art to reflect society’s health.
  • A sense of aesthetics was connected to the plight of the oppressed. The appearance and activities of Hull House reflect Addams’ elevation of art and culture, which aligns with Ruskin’s aesthetics.

HULL HOUSE

  • Hull Home was a settlement house in Chicago that Addams and her college companion and lover Ellen Gates Starr co-founded in 1889. Charles Hull had constructed the dilapidated mansion in 1856, requiring renovation. 
  • The majority of the operational expenditures as well as all of the capital costs, including repairing the porch’s roof, painting the rooms, and purchasing furnishings, were initially covered by Addams.
  • Even though the annual budget expanded quickly, the House was nevertheless sustained by gifts from individuals as early as its first year, and Addams was able to lower the percentage of her contributions. 
  • Several affluent women, including Helen Culver, who oversaw the administration of her first cousin Charles Hull’s estate and ultimately granted the contributors rent-free use of the home, became significant long-term benefactors to the House.
  • The home’s first two residents were Addams and Starr, but eventually, it was home to roughly 25 women. Around 2,000 people visited Hull House each week at its busiest.
  • The settlement house, as Addams realized, was a place where the limiting limits of culture, class, and education could be expanded, and unexpected cultural ties might be created. They served as both social assistance organizations and community arts institutions. 
  • They created the framework for American civil society, an impartial setting where many communities and ideologies could exchange knowledge and look for points of agreement to take collective action.
  • Well-educated women who shared a commitment to labor unions, the National Consumers League, and the suffrage campaign made up most of Hull House’s residents. 
  • The Hull House’s art program was one feature that Jane Addams valued highly. Addams criticized the industrialized education system, which “suited” each student to a particular vocation or position through the Hull House art program.
  • The most well-known settlement house in America is Hull House. Because societal and communal conditions needed to be altered to keep families safe, Addams used it to spark system-directed change. 
  • Local political power brokers ruled the neighborhood.

ADVOCACIES

  • Hull House emphasized the significance of the part that kids play in helping new immigrants acculturate. This ideology supported the play movement and the leisure, youth, and human services study and service sectors. 
  • Play and recreation programs are required because cities are sapping the soul of kids, according to Addams’ argument in The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909).
  • The Juvenile Protective Association was established in 1901 by Jane Addams and her Hull House coworkers. Before it was required by law, JPA provided the first probation officers for the country’s first juvenile court.
  • JPA conducted numerous studies from 1907 to the 1940s on various topics, including racism, child labor and prostitution in Chicago, drug misuse, and these consequences on child development. 
  • Their goal was to enhance at-risk children’s social and emotional functioning and well-being to realize their full potential at home, in the classroom, and in their communities.
  • One of the values Addams and her colleagues initially intended Hull House as a transmission device to bring to the masses was the Efficiency Movement, a significant movement in industrialized countries in the early 20th century that desired to recognize and eliminate waste in the economy and society as well as to develop and implement best practices.
  • However, as can be seen from the Butler Building’s development, the emphasis shifted from bringing art and culture to the neighborhood to addressing the community’s needs by offering daycare, educational opportunities, and spacious meeting rooms. 
  • Hull House developed into more than just a testing ground for the new generation of college-educated, career-minded women; its growth reflects a shared history with the neighborhood in which it was created.
  • Addams urged women to fulfill their civic obligation by getting active in local affairs as a matter of “civic housekeeping,” particularly middle-class women with spare time and energy and wealthy philanthropists. As a result, Addams expanded the idea of civic responsibility to include roles for women outside of parenting (which involved child rearing).
  • Daughterhood, sexuality, wifehood, and motherhood all had a part in how Addams defined womanhood. The gender constructs in Jane Addams’s two autobiographical books, Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910) and The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House (1930), align with the Progressive-Era philosophy she supported. 
  • She examined the social disease of sex slavery, prostitution, and other sexual activities among working-class women in American industrial centers from 1890 to 1910 in A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912).

LATER LIFE

  • Even though Addams struggled with health issues frequently as a child and throughout her life, her condition started to deteriorate more seriously in 1926 when she had a heart attack. 
  • She passed away in Chicago on May 21, 1935, at 74 and was laid to rest in her native Cedarville, Illinois.

LEGACY

  • As a reformer, Addams changed her Chicago neighborhood’s social and physical landscape by petitioning the authorities. Even though modern academic sociologists classified Addams’s work as “social work,” her efforts were very different from what was commonly classified as “social work” at the time.
  • The Hull House was founded due to Jane Addams’ involvement, and she also impacted communities and society as a whole, reached out to colleges and universities to try to improve the educational system, and shared her expertise with others through books and speeches.

Jane Addams Worksheets

This fantastic bundle includes everything you need to know about Jane Addams across 22 in-depth pages. These ready-to-use worksheets are perfect for teaching kids about Jane Addams, an American settlement organizer, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author.

Jane Addams Worksheets
Jane Addams Worksheets
Jane Addams Worksheets

Download includes the following worksheets.

  1. Jane Addams Facts
  2. Addams’ Life
  3. Vocabulary Picture
  4. Famous Quotes
  5. Quote of My Life
  6. I Will Fight For
  7. As A Youth
  8. We Matter
  9. Opinion Poll
  10. My Skills
  11. She Is My Hero

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Jane Addams?

Jane Addams was an American settlement activist, social worker, and reformer who lived from 1860 to 1935. She was a pioneer in the fields of social work and activism and is best known for co-founding the settlement house, Hull House, in Chicago, which provided services and support to the city’s immigrant and working-class communities.

What was Hull House?

Hull House was a settlement house founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. It was located in the largely immigrant and working-class neighborhood of Chicago, and its mission was to provide education, social services, and cultural programs to its residents. Hull House became a model for other settlement houses in the United States, and Addams’ work there helped to establish the field of social work as a profession.

What were some of Jane Addams’ contributions to social reform?

Jane Addams was a leading figure in the American settlement movement, and her work at Hull House helped to improve the lives of countless people in Chicago’s working-class and immigrant communities. She was also an advocate for women’s suffrage, labor rights, and peace and was a co-founder of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Why is Jane Addams important in history?

Jane Addams is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in American history. Her work at Hull House helped to change the way that social services were provided to marginalized communities, and her advocacy for social justice and equality had a profound impact on American society. Her contributions to the fields of social work and activism have earned her recognition as a leader and a pioneer, and she is often referred to as the “Mother of Social Work.”

What recognition has Jane Addams received for her work?

Jane Addams was widely recognized for her contributions to American society during her lifetime, and her legacy has continued to be celebrated in the years since her death. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 and was the first American woman to receive this prestigious award. She was also inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, and many of her writings and speeches continue to be widely read and studied today.

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