Frances Willard quote about childhood and her mother:
“Mother was nearly thirty-five when I was born, the fourth of her five children, one of whom, the first, had passed away in infancy, and the third at the age of fourteen months. This little girl, Caroline Elizabeth, mother has always spoken of as the most promising child she ever bore, or, for that matter, ever saw. ‘She was a vision of delight,’ with deep blue eyes and dark brown hair; a disposition without flaw, her nerves being so well encased and her little spirit so perfectly equipoised that she would sit or lie in her cradle cooing to herself by the hour, and when she rode, the beauty of the world outdoors seemed so well apprehend by the seraphic child that her little hands were constantly outstretched and her sweet eyes were full of light and comprehension, while her silver voice took on such an ecstasy as was remarked by all who knew her. My little sister passed to heaven just as she began to speak the language of this world. My mother’s first great grief then broke her heart, and as I came less than one year afterward, the deep questionings and quivering pathos of her spirit had their effect on mine. She lived much with her books, especially the Bible and the poets, in this chastened interval. Many a time she said to me, ‘Frank, above all things else thank heaven you were a welcome child, of I had prayed so often that another little girl might come into our home for us to love.'”
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Frances Willard would become an educator, temperance reformer, women’s suffragist and national president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1879, a position she held until her death in 1898.
Frances was guided in life by the belief that “The Lord is real, His whole nature is love.”
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“Frances Willard quote about childhood and her mother” sources:
Glimpses of fifty years; the autobiography of an American woman by Frances Willard / Frances Willard, half-length portrait, seated, facing left. [Between 1880 and 1898] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/97510769/>.
