Fountain Girl: Frances Willard Memorial

Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was born on September 28, 1839 in Churchville, New York. In 1841, she and her family moved to Oberlin, Ohio and then, five years later, to a farm outside of Janesville in the Wisconsin Territory. As a young girl, Willard received almost all of her early education at home from her mother. In 1857, she enrolled at the Milwaukee Female College. After spending a year there, Willard transferred to the North Western Female College in Evanston, Illinois, from which she graduated in 1859. Following graduation, she embarked on a career as a schoolteacher, which took her as far away as Pennsylvania and New York. In 1871, Willard became president of the newly founded Evanston College for Ladies. Two years later, Northwestern University absorbed the all-female educational institution and Willard became the dean of the Women’s College. Clashes with Charles H. Fowler, Northwestern’s president and her former fiancée, however, led to her resignation in 1874. 

Soon after Willard’s resignation from Northwestern, a group of Chicago women approached her and asked her to become president of their local temperance society, an offer which she accepted. In October 1874, Willard became secretary of the state temperance society and, the following month, the corresponding secretary of the newly formed Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Five years later, she was elected president of the WCTU, a position she held for nearly two decades. Under her direction, the WCTU became one of the largest and most influential women’s organizations in the country. A women’s suffragist herself, Willard encouraged the organization’s members to get involved in politics and advocate for change in various areas. In 1891, she became president of the World’s WCTU, which she helped found in 1883. After years of deteriorating health, Willard died in New York City on February 17, 1898. She was fifty-eight years old. 

While Willard was still president of the WCTU, the organization commissioned English sculptor George Wade to design a decorative drinking fountain in honor of its long-time president. Paid for by small donations from children around the world, the fountain would be displayed near the WCTU’s booth at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. When completed, Wade’s fountain featured a bronze sculpture of a little girl in a dress. Standing barefoot with outstretched arms, she holds a bowl from which water flows into a granite basin below. Two years after the exhibition, the WCTU relocated the fountain to the Woman’s Temple at the intersection of La Salle and Monroe Streets in Chicago. Additionally, reproductions of the fountain were made and installed in Detroit, Portland (Maine), and even London. In 1921, the fountain moved to the city’s Lincoln Park near Lake Shore Drive and North Avenue. In the 1930s, the Chicago Park District placed the fountain in storage in preparation for construction on Lake Shore Drive. There it remained until 1940, when the Chicago Park District reinstalled it in Lincoln Park, just south of the West LaSalle Drive underpass. In the late 1950s, the fountain’s bronze sculpture was stolen. It was never recovered. In 2007, philanthropist and Lincoln Park resident Jeanette Van Nice contacted the Chicago Park District and the Lincoln Park Conservancy about reproducing the fountain’s missing bronze sculpture. Thanks to Van Nice’s donation, along with financial support from the State of Illinois and the Lincoln Park Conservancy, the Chicago Park District worked closely with the City of Portland, Maine to create a reproduction of their sculpture. Finally, in 2012, the reproduction was installed on the original granite base in Lincoln Park. 

"Biography." Frances Willard House Museum and Archives. The Center for Women's History and Leadership. Web. 18 February 2021 <https://franceswillardhouse.org/frances-willard/biography/>.

"Fountain Girl." Chicago Park District. Web. 18 February 2021 <https://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/fountain-girl>.

"Frances Willard." Encyclopædia Britannica. Web. 18 February 2021 <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frances-Willard>.

Mattingly, Carol. "Woman's Temple, Women's Fountains: The Erasure of Public Memory." American Studies 49, no. 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2008): 133-156.