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.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Hazing is “a species of brutal horseplay practiced on freshmen at some American Colleges.” For nearly thirty years from the Pre-WWII era until the 1960’s, Wheaton College was no exception to this tradition. The rivalry between the incoming freshman and sophomore classes arose from parties thrown in the 1920’s to actually honor the freshman by the sophomores. In 1933 the Student Council approved “organized torture for the incoming classes.” The sophomore class would elect people to the “sophomore courts” which had the authority to summon freshman who were not following the rules. Punishment for failing to obey the regulations was originally twenty swats with a bare hand. However, as time went on, these punishments became less severe. Any freshman who did not participate in the system lost their privilege to be involved with class activities.

According to Freshman Hazing Rules listed in the Fall 1941 Record:

1. Dinks must be worn at all times except on Sunday and Friday evenings after 6:30 p.m.
2. Badges sold by the sophomore class must be worn at all times except Sunday and Friday evenings.
3. The following walks must not be used by freshman: between Williston and the Gym; between Williston and Blanchard; between Blanchard and the Gym; and the back entrance to the Stupe.
4. Keep off all grass on the entire campus.
5. At command “ATTENTION” given by a sophomore, the response is to simultaneously button with one hand and salute with the other and click the heels.
6. At command “BLITZKRIEG,” a white handkerchief knotted at each end, must be thrown in the air and caught on the head.
7. On Wednesdays, carry books in wastepaper basket. Boys will also carry whisk brooms and cloths to perform valet services for any upper classmen.
8. On Thursdays, both boys and girls must wear all clothes backwards, including dress shirts worn by boys. Walk backwards on campus. Girls’ hair must be in pigtails.
9. On Fridays, girls must wear one dress shoe with sock and one saddle shoe with stocking. Boys must wear clothes inside out, with one pant leg rolled to the knee.
10. On Saturdays, girls wear hair in curlers and war dresses and boys wear bow ties with crew neck shirts.

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), Illinois poet laureate, collector of songs and Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln biographer, resided in Elmhurst, Illinois, from 1919-30, writing for several Windy City newspapers, notably the legendary Chicago Daily News. After three productive, happy decades living in Illinois and Michigan, he moved in 1945 with his family to North Carolina where his wife, Paula, raised award-winning goats on their farm, “Connemara.” There he continued writing poetry and his one novel, Remembrance Rock, in addition to traveling the country, playing his guitar and singing American ballads. Renowned as both felicitious wordsmith and exhaustive researcher, he was hired by 20th Century Fox in 1961 to work on the script for director George Stevens’s biblical epic, The Greatest Story Ever Told. (Stevens also directed The Diary of Ann Frank.) The film, released in 1965, features Max von Sydow, Angela Lansbury, Shelly Winters, John Wayne, Roddy McDowell, Charlton Heston, Donald Pleasence, Sidney Poitier and Telly Savalas – truly an “all star cast.”

While in Hollywood, Sandburg received an inquiry from a Mr. Wood, who evidently asked about the author’s relationship to Wheaton College. Typing on a sheet of “George Stevens Productions” letterhead, Sandburg responds on May 10, 1962: “Dear Mr. Wood: Along late in the coming autumn my schedule for 1962 will be in the making. When residing in Elmhurst I rode all around Wheaton on a bicycle and have an old neighborly feeling about Wheaton College. Sincerely, Carl Sandburg.”

Though Sandburg receives screen credit for “creative association,” his exact contribution to the project is not fully known. He received the job on the recommendation of Ray Bradbury, who declined the studio’s request that he write the script. Sandburg, born in Galesburg, Illinois, where Wheaton’s first president, Jonathan Blanchard, also served as president of Knox College, wrote in his autobiography, Always the Young Stranger, a rather unflattering portrait of the ever-crusading Blanchard, describing him as “…not one bigot but several.” He felt that Blanchard’s influence, which wasn’t cast in any positive sense, was present for decades after his departure, so much so that one could almost “catch the ghost of him.” To Sandburg Blanchard was the amalgam of a lion, bear and buffalo, and possibly half horse and half alligator!

Sandburg died in 1967. His ashes are interred beneath a boulder called “Remembrance Rock” in the backyard of his childhood home in Galesburg.