Ellen Gates Starr
Ellen Gates Starr, who was born in Illinois in 1859, enrolled in Rockford Female Seminary. Here, she met what would be a long-time friend, Jane Addams. Together, they founded a mansion in the city of Chicago. After fixing it up, the Hull House was formed. This became the first settlement house in Chicago and in the United States, officially opening in 1889. This mansion was surrounded by the slums of Chicago. They felt no need to move it to another part of the city, but where it would feel more welcoming to the female immigrants and their children. The reason for opening the mansion was to give women a place to stay. Starr felt that the slums obviously weren't sufficient enough.
The Hull House was an important step for the many Chicago immigrants needing help. Although it started out as a nursery, the mothers of the children would sit in a room to sit and talk. The house later developed into a larger house of education. Here, you could take classes, do activities, and learn English. The mansion had many options for one person to keep busy with. Many immigrants brought their children to the Hull House, too. Here, the children were taken care of and also paid very close attention to. Adults also found a warm welcome in this mansion. There were clinics, exhibits, and different typos of classes being taken to further their education.
Starr began to teach at the Hull House. The showed girls how to cook and sew. Starr also created art classes and other painting exhibits. She also thought of a way to let people borrow some paintings to hang in their own house. Among the years, Starr became locally known. She was called "the principal coordinator for cultural activities at Hull House". In her later years, Starr attempted to reform child labor laws and help poor immigrant factory workers earn more money and make labor much easier for them. She was close to all the women and took the time to learn about their ethnic background, their cultures, and their customs.
Sklar, Kathryn Kish. “Hull House in the 1890’s: A Community of Women Reformers.” In Women and Power in American History, 3rd edition, edited by Kathryn Kish Skylar and
The arrival of immigrants triggered a rapid urbanization of the major cities in the United States. New buildings were built to keep up with the city’s population increase, new modes of transportation were built in order to get across the city faster, and settlement house were created The immigrants rushed into cities causing skyscrapers and tenements to be build. As a result of limited land, businesses decide to build the business up instead of out. In addition, many of the immigrants were poor, so the tenement was invented. A tenement is a building full of small apartments that would house many families. Document two shows an immigrant family living in one of these tenements. In addition, to changes in building there were also changes
Throughout the early 1900s an American immigrant experience was subject to society’s opinion and the nation’s policies. Various ethnicities endured the harsh reality that was American culture while familiarizing themselves with their families. Immigration thrived off the strength and pride demonstrated by their neighborhoods. Notions of race, cultural adaptations and neighborhood represented the ways by which human being were assessed. In a careful interpretation of Mary Lui’s “The Chinatown Trunk Mystery” and Michael Innis-Jimenez’s “Steel Barrio”, I will trace the importance of a neighborhood in the immigrant experience explaining the way in which neighborhoods were created, how these lines were crossed and notions of race factored into separating these neighborhoods.
Twenty Years at Hull-House Two Works Cited Victoria Bissell Brown's introduction to Twenty Years at Hull-House explains the life of Jane Addams and her commitment to insight social change to problems that existed during the turn of the 20th century. As a reaction to the hardships of a changing industrial society, Addams decided to establish a settlement house in the West side of Chicago to help individuals who had suffered from the cruelties of industrialization. Rejecting the philosophies that stemmed from the Gilded Age, such as social Darwinism and the belief that human affairs were determined by natural law, Addams was a progressive who wanted government to be more responsive to the people. As a progressive, Jane Addams committed herself as a social servant to the community in an attempt to fulfill the promise of democracy to everyone rather than a small elite group. Addams’s dedication to communitarian purposes as opposed to individualist gains can be attributed to her upbringing and her remarkable respect for her father, John Huy Addams.
Compared to people in the twenty-first century, with all their modern conveniences and technological advances, the life of any early-American seems difficult. However, the lives of children were among the most arduous. Linda Pollock states in her book Forgotten Children that between 1660 and 1800 families -and society in general- became more affectionate, child-oriented, and permissive of uniqueness and unstructured time (67). Although this may be true, many other sources depict the lives of children as taxing and oppressive at best. Children of the time were either forced to abandon education for their family contributions, or had to balance school with a full day's work ("Education"). Even when they were not in school or doing manual labor, their day-to-day lives were uncomfortable and harsh (Kids). Social status, as is expected, was a key factor in determining how hard a child's life would be (Murray 9). Although many children at the time had it easier than others they were all asked at an early age to take on adult responsibilities. The lives of all children in 1800 were mundane and difficult due to family and societal expectations for labor, schooling, and maturity.
Women’s History - 2nd edition. The creation of Hull House allowed for a closer and more understanding relationship between the settlement workers themselves and the immigrants and the poor. Jane knew as a little child that she wanted to help the poor, and she recalls an incident early in her life of seeing a homeless man on the street. She asked her father why that was, and he replied that that was just the way things were.
She was working but then she had three daughters Ellen,Ann,Harriet.In 1847 Robert smith moved his extend family and slaves.Her folks told her to go get there freedom back.So she did and helped some slaves.And that's when she started to make the churches.
While Addams was a great organizer and reformer, it must be noted that she had the help of several ambitious women at Hull House who were progressive thinkers in their own right. Furthermore, she would have never been able to achieve so much without the many donations that she was able to secure from philanthropists. Today, the 13 buildings that surrounded the Hull House settlement have been destroyed, but the original mansion still stands as a museum. The Jane Addams Hull-House Association still operates in Chicago.
At the age of ten, most children are dependent on their parents for everything in their lives needing a great deal of attention and care. However, Ellen, the main character and protagonist of the novel Ellen Foster, exemplifies a substantial amount of independence and mature, rational thought as a ten-year-old girl. The recent death of her mother sends her on a quest for the ideal family, or anywhere her father, who had shown apathy to both she and her fragile mother, was not. Kaye Gibbons’ use of simple diction, unmarked dialogue, and a unique story structure in her first novel, Ellen Foster, allows the reader to explore the emotions and thoughts of this heroic, ten-year-old girl modeled after Gibbons’ own experiences as a young girl.
Kaye Gibbons, the author of the novel Ellen Foster, believes that a quote from the Emerson’s “Self Reliance” is connected with Ellen’s struggle to survive and find her way in the world. The first line of this quote says, “Cast the bantling on the rocks” is related to Ellen herself. A bantling is an abandoned child. Ellen is a bantling even though she was not abandoned, she was deprived of a normal childhood. Her life as a child was extremely hard, physically and emotionally. She never had a mother or father take care of her through her entire youth. You could say that her childhood was “cast on the rocks”. The last line reads, “Power and speed be hands and feet”. This reminds me of how Ellen ran from her problems at home and stayed away from her house as much as possible. The line also represents strength and Ellen was a strong person. She dealt with losing a mother, father and grandmother within one year. She never even had a good relationship with her father or grandmother. The short inscription to “Self Reliance” is almost a short summary of Ellen’s character. In it, a child without parents is raised by someone that is a lot different than she is. After Ellen’s mother died, she is unwillingly left with her alcoholic father who mistreats her. Ellen spent a lot of time at her friend, Starletta’s house and at the house of her grandmother. Life with her grandmother was no better than life with her father. She did not want to be in either situation. After living with her grandmother, Ellen’s struggle to find a suitable, comforting home comes to an end. For the second time in her life, a family member has died right next to her, basically in her arms. Ellen is able to overcome this, even as a
The Atypical Woman in a Typical World Do many people know who Anne Spencer is? Probably not. Anne Spencer was a Harlem Renaissance poet who actually lived in Lynchburg, Virginia. She immensely enjoyed working in her garden and spending time in Edankraal, a small cottage in her garden where she wrote most of her poetry. Though Anne was a hard worker, she definitely was not a typical woman of the early 20th century.
This document tells us a lot of immigrant experiences in America at that time.First of all,they live in a flat without bathtub,so they have to bathe in public.Second,as Mary Antin said,“in America,then,everything was free, as we had heard in Russia.Light was free;the streets were as bright as a synagogue on a holy day.”As an immigrant in America at that time,they might see a lot of new inventions,which were not popular yet in their motherland.Third,most of new immigrants had poor English skill at that time.Forth,the education was free at that time.Last but not least,as Mary Antin said, “Occasionally, indeed, I was stung by the wasp of family trouble; but I knew a healing ointment--my faith in America.”The immigrants would happen to be in love with America over
Migration in the Early 20th century to America was scary in many ways; mothers feared losing their children to American Institutes. Some mothers felt American education made children, “persons of leisure” (Ewen, 1985). Mother’s felt that schools set their children up to loses; they felt their daughters were needed at home to help with hous...
The northern and western Europe Germany, Ireland, Britain, and the Scandinavian countries slowed, more and more immigrants poured in from southern and eastern Europe, because of these new generation made Jews escaping from political and economic oppression in czarist Russia and Eastern Europe and Italians escaping poverty in their country. There were also Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Serbs, Slovaks, and Greeks, along with non Europeans from Syria, turkey and Armenia. The reason they left their homes in the old world included war, drought, famine and religious persecution, and all had hopes for greater opportunity in the new world. I have been to Oyster Island. The island was utilized by Native American. The Native American came to Ellis Island because they wanted to get large oysters. The Oysters are the good sources of food. There were a lot of food sources arrow heads, fossilizes plants, fish bones, duck bones, and deer bones. These sources help Native American diets and settlements pattern. When they are tried to find small shells they found the way to live in the island. They were really respected to living creature and to the island. I went to silent voices. The immigration closed their offices and they moved to Manhattan. They made the building that is
Center stage in Kaye Gibbons’ inspiring bildungsroman, Ellen Foster, is the spunky heroine Ellen Foster. At the start of the novel, Ellen is a fiery nine-year old girl. Her whole life, especially the three years depicted in Ellen Foster, Ellen is exposed to death, neglect, hunger and emotional and physical abuse. Despite the atrocities surrounding her, Ellen asks for nothing more than to find a “new mama” to love her. She avoids facing the harsh reality of strangers and her own family’s cruelty towards her by using different forms of escapism. Thrice Ellen is exposed to death (Gibbons 27). Each time, Ellen has a conversation with a magician to cope with the trauma (Gibbons 22-145). Many times Ellen’s actions and words cause it to be difficult to tell that she is still a child. However, in order to distract herself, Ellen will play meaningful games (Gibbons 26). These games become a fulcrum for Ellen’s inner child to express itself. Frequently, Ellen will lapse into a daydream (Gibbons 67). Usually, these daydreams are meant to protect herself from the harsh reality around her. Ellen Foster’s unique use of escapism resounds as the theme of Kaye Gibbon’s Ellen Foster.