Nurture of Human Life

Laura Jane Addams was born on September 6, 1860, in Cedarville, Illinois, United States, the youngest of eight children in a prosperous family of English-American descent. Her father, John H. Addams, was a prominent agricultural businessman, banker, and Illinois state senator who supported his friend Abraham Lincoln. Her mother, Sarah Weber Addams, died when Jane was two, and she was raised largely by older sisters until her father remarried. A childhood illness, tuberculosis of the spine, left her with a lifelong curvature of the back, but she excelled academically, graduating as valedictorian from Rockford Female Seminary in 1881. Initially intending to become a doctor, she began medical school but withdrew due to health problems, later traveling in Europe.

In 1889, inspired by London’s Toynbee Hall, Jane Addams co-founded Hull House in Chicago with her friend Ellen Gates Starr. Hull House became one of the most influential settlement houses in the United States, offering education, cultural programs, childcare, and social services to immigrant and working-class families. It also served as a base for research, civic reform, and advocacy on labor laws, public health, and child welfare. Addams’s work combined practical assistance with a philosophy of “social democracy,” fostering cooperation across class and cultural lines. She played a leading role in Progressive Era reforms, advancing women’s suffrage, labor rights, and education, while keeping a pragmatic, nonpartisan approach that allowed her to work with a wide range of political figures.

A committed pacifist, Jane Addams was active in international peace efforts during and after World War I, helping to found the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1920, she co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union. She was the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Yale University (1910) and, in 1931, became the first American woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Addams wrote extensively, describing peace as the active nurturing of human life. She died on May 21, 1935, in Chicago at the age of seventy-four, remembered as a founder of the social work profession in the United States and a moral leader whose influence extended well beyond her own time.