The New England Women's Club (est.1868) of Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, was the "first woman's club

Women's club

Women’s clubs, also known as woman's clubs, first arose in the United States during the post-Civil War period, in both the North and the South. As a result of increased leisure time due to modern household advances, middle-class women had more time to engage in intellectual pursuits...

" in the United States. Members of the club in its early years included Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney

Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney

Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney was a writer, reformer, and philanthropist, born on Beacon Hill, Boston to Sargent Smith Littledale and Ednah Parker . She was educated in private schools in Boston. She was secretary of the School of Design for Women from 1851 till 1854.She married portrait artist Seth...

, Julia Ward Howe

Julia Ward Howe

Julia Ward Howe was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet, most famous as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".-Biography:...

, Mary Livermore

Mary Livermore

Mary Livermore, born Mary Ashton Rice, was an American journalist and advocate of women's rights.-Biography:...

, Lucretia Mott

Lucretia Mott

Lucretia Coffin Mott was an American Quaker, abolitionist, social reformer, and proponent of women's rights.- Early life and education:...

, Elizabeth Peabody

Elizabeth Peabody

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody was an American educator who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States. Long before most educators, Peabody embraced the premise that children's play has intrinsic developmental and educational value.-Biography:Peabody was born in Billerica,...

, Lucretia Peabody, Caroline M. Severance, and Lucy Stone

Lucy Stone

Lucy Stone was a prominent American abolitionist and suffragist, and a vocal advocate and organizer promoting rights for women. In 1847, Stone was the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree. She spoke out for women's rights and against slavery at a time when women were discouraged...

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History

In 1868 "club rooms were first secured in ... the rear of the popular Tremont House

Tremont House

Tremont House , sometimes called the Tremont Hotel, was a highly influential hotel designed in 1829 by Isaiah Rogers in Boston, Massachusetts...

. On May 30, 1868, the first meeting to introduce the New England Woman's Club to the public was held in Chickering Hall. At this meeting such able friends and advisers as Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...

, James Freeman Clarke

James Freeman Clarke

James Freeman Clarke , an American theologian and author.-Biography:Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, James Freeman Clarke attended the Boston Latin School, graduated from Harvard College in 1829, and Harvard Divinity School in 1833...

, Jacob Manning, John Weiss, O.B. Frothingham

Octavius Brooks Frothingham

Octavius Brooks Frothingham , was an American clergyman and author.-Biography:He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham , a prominent Unitarian preacher, and through his mother's family he was related to Phillips Brooks...

, Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Thomas Wentworth Higginson was an American Unitarian minister, author, abolitionist, and soldier. He was active in the American Abolitionism movement during the 1840s and 1850s, identifying himself with disunion and militant abolitionism...

, Bronson Alcott

Amos Bronson Alcott

Amos Bronson Alcott was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a...

, Julia W. Howe and Mrs. E.D. Cheney were the speakers." In its first year, club members set about organizing a horticultural school.
Around the 1870s in Boston there existed a few other clubs "patronized by ladies, viz: ... the Saturday Morning Club, the Brains Club and the Young Ladies Club, the members of which are in general high-toned persons, interested in intellectual and philanthropic matters -- no cigars, no champagne and no 'draw,' except in the tea-pot."

The club incorporated in 1887; Sarah H. Bradford, Ednah D. Cheney, Lucy Goddard, Abby W. May, L.M. Peabody, Harriet M. Pittman, H.W. Sewall

Harriet Winslow Sewall

Harriet Winslow Sewall was an American poet, and editor of the collected letters of Lydia Maria Child.-Biography:Harriet Winslow was born in Portland, Maine on June 20, 1819 into a Quaker family. She was educated in Portland and at a boarding school in Providence, Rhode Island...

, and Kate Gannett Wells served as signatories. "The object of this association shall be to provide a suitable place of meeting in Boston for the convenience of its members, and to promote social enjoyment and general improvement." Committees oversaw club activities with regards to "Art and Literature;" "Discussions;" "Education;" and "Work." "Monday Teas" were held every week. "The new association was officered and controlled by women, although during the first quarter century there were a very few men enrolled -- names like the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson." By 1893 some 340 members belonged to the club.

Lectures occurred frequently, given by both club members and invited speakers. Among the many lecturers in the club's first decades were: Louis Agassiz

Louis Agassiz

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a Swiss paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist and a prominent innovator in the study of the Earth's natural history. He grew up in Switzerland and became a professor of natural history at University of Neuchâtel...

, Amos Bronson Alcott, George Thorndike Angell

George Thorndike Angell

George Thorndike Angell was an American lawyer, philanthropist, and advocate for the humane treatment of animals....

, Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

Richard Henry Dana Jr. was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts, a descendant of an eminent colonial family who gained renown as the author of the American classic, the memoir Two Years Before the Mast...

, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Annie Adams Fields

Annie Adams Fields

Annie Adams Fields was a United States writer.- 1834 -1881 :Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she was the second wife of the publisher and author James Thomas Fields, whom she married in 1854, and with whom she encouraged up and coming writers such as Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary Freeman, and Emma Lazarus...

, James T. Fields

James Thomas Fields

James Thomas Fields was an American publisher, editor, and poet.-Early life and family:He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on December 31, 1817 and named James Field; the family later added the "s". His father was a sea captain and died before Fields was three...

, William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison

William Lloyd Garrison was a prominent American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known as the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he promoted "immediate emancipation" of slaves in the United...

, Edward Everett Hale

Edward Everett Hale

Edward Everett Hale was an American author, historian and Unitarian clergyman. He was a child prodigy who exhibited extraordinary literary skills and at age thirteen was enrolled at Harvard University where he graduated second in his class...

, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. was an American physician, professor, lecturer, and author. Regarded by his peers as one of the best writers of the 19th century, he is considered a member of the Fireside Poets. His most famous prose works are the "Breakfast-Table" series, which began with The Autocrat...

, Henry James

Henry James

Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....

, and Mary Tyler Peabody Mann

Mary Tyler Peabody Mann

Mary Tyler Peabody Mann of chronic bronchitis) was a teacher, author, mother, and wife of Horace Mann, American education reformer and politician.-Early Life:Mary Tyler Peabody Mann was the daughter of Dr. Nathaniel Peabody and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody...

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Around 1903 the club moved its headquarters from Park Street

Park Street, Boston

This article refers to Park Street in Boston. For other Park Streets, please see the Park Street disambiguation page.Park Street is a small but notable road in the center of Boston, Massachusetts. It begins at the top of Beacon Hill, at the intersection of Beacon Street, where it is lined up with...

 to the newly constructed "New Century Building" on Huntington Avenue, designed by architect Josephine Wright Chapman

Josephine Wright Chapman

Josephine Wright Chapman was an architect in Boston, Massachusetts, and New York. She trained with Clarence Blackall, and was later affiliated with Grundmann Studios. She belonged to the "Society of Architects." Around 1909 she "reign[ed] supreme as the only woman architect in the Hub."-Designs:*...

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Further reading

• C.P. Cranch. Ode; read at the festival celebrating the birthday of Margaret Fuller
  Margaret Fuller
  Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller, was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism...
  
   Ossoli, held by the New England Women's club, Boston, May 23, 1870. Atlantic Monthly, Aug. 1870.
• Julia A. Sprague. History of the New England Women's Club from 1868 to 1893. Boston: Lee & Shepard
  Lee & Shepard
  Lee & Shepard was a publishing and bookselling firm in Boston, Massachusetts in the 19th century, established by William Lee and Charles Augustus Billings Shepard Authors published by the firm included: George Melville Baker; Sophie May; Henry Morgan; Oliver Optic; William Carey Richards;...
  
  , 1894.
• J.C. Croly. "New England Woman's Club." The history of the woman's club movement in America. NY: H. G. Allen & Co., 1898; p.35+ Published under the authority of the General Federation of Women's Clubs
• Ednah Dow Cheney, 1824-1904: memorial meeting, New England Women's Club, Boston, February 20, 1905. Boston: Geo. H. Ellis Co., printers, 1905.

External links

• Google news archive. Articles about the club
• http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00102
• Boston Athenaeum. Dickens party at the New England Woman’s Club, 1905; photo by Elmer Chickering. "Group portrait taken at a party at which club members dressed in costume as characters from the novels of Charles Dickens. Handwritten key on verso identifies three of the members as Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, the hostess, who founded the club in 1868; Mrs. Daniel Lothrop dressed as Betsey Trotwood; and Mrs. Leo Hunter."