Editing Jane Addams (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Jane Addams.jpg|thumb|Jane Addams as a young woman, undated studio portrait by Cox, Chicago]]
[[File:Jane Addams Birthplace.gif|thumb|Birthplace of Jane Addams in Cedarville, Illinois. ''Source'' Addams: ''Twenty Years at Hull House'' (1910), in the public domain.]]

Born in [[Cedarville, Illinois]],<ref name="Cullen-DuPont 2000">{{cite book|author=Kathryn Cullen-DuPont|title=Encyclopedia of women's history in America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oIro7MtiFuYC&pg=PA374|year=2000|publisher=Infobase Publishing|isbn=978-0-8160-4100-8|pages=4–5}}</ref> Jane Addams was the youngest of eight children born into a prosperous northern Illinois family of [[English-American]] descent which traced back to colonial Pennsylvania.<ref name=linn>Linn, James Weber. ''Jane Addams: A Biography'', ([https://books.google.com/books?id=SXM_zMK3u4YC&dq=%22John+H.+Addams%22+Pennsylvania&pg=PA4 Google Books]), University of Illinois Press: 2000, p. 4, ({{ISBN|0252069048}}). Retrieved August 20, 2007.</ref> In 1863, when Addams was two years old, her mother, Sarah Addams ([[married and maiden names|née]] Weber), died while pregnant with her ninth child. Thereafter Addams was cared for mostly by her older sisters. By the time Addams was eight, four of her siblings had died: three in infancy and one at the age of 16.<ref>{{cite book|last=Linn|first=James Weber|title=Jane Addams:Biography|publisher=University of Illinois Press|year=2000|orig-year=1935|location=Urbana|page=24|isbn=0-252-06904-8 }}</ref><ref name="linn" /><ref>{{cite book|last=Knight|first=Louise W.|title=Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy|url=https://archive.org/details/citizenjaneaddam00knig|url-access=limited|publisher=University of Chicago Press|year=2005|location=Chicago|pages=[https://archive.org/details/citizenjaneaddam00knig/page/n48 32]–33}}</ref><ref name="kloppenberg">Fox, Richard Wrightman and [[James T. Kloppenberg|Kloppenberg, James T.]] ''A Companion to American Thought'', ([https://books.google.com/books?id=2uO3OfRKOpEC&dq=%22John+Addams%22+Illinois+Senate&pg=PA14 Google Books]), Blackwell Publishing: 1995, p. 14, ({{ISBN|0631206566}}). Retrieved August 20, 2007.</ref>

Addams spent her childhood playing outdoors, reading indoors, and attending [[Sunday school]]. When she was four she contracted [[tuberculosis]] of the spine, known as [[Pott disease|Potts's disease]], which caused a curvature in her spine and lifelong health problems. This made it complicated as a child to function with the other children, considering she had a limp and could not run as well.<ref>{{cite web|title=Jane Addams and Hull-House|url=http://www.teachspace.org/personal/research/addams/index.html|publisher=DeVry University|location=Her childhood|page=1|year=2001}}</ref> As a child, she thought she was ugly and later remembered wanting not to embarrass her father, when he was dressed in his Sunday best, by walking down the street with him.<ref>{{cite book|last=Knight|first=Louise W.|title=Citizen|pages=36–37}}</ref>

Jane Addams adored her father, [[John H. Addams]], when she was a child, as she made clear in the stories in her memoir, ''Twenty Years at Hull House'' (1910).<ref name=":0" /> He was a founding member of the Illinois [[History of the Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]], served as an [[Illinois Senate|Illinois State Senator]] (1855–70), and supported his friend [[Abraham Lincoln]] in his candidacies for senator (1854) and the presidency (1860). He kept a letter from Lincoln in his desk, and Addams loved to look at it as a child.<ref>{{cite book|title=Citizen|last=Knight|first=Louise W.|pages=30–32, 424n64}}</ref> Her father was an agricultural businessman with large timber, cattle, and agricultural holdings; flour and timber mills and a wool factory. He was the president of The Second National Bank of [[Freeport, Illinois]]. He remarried in 1868 when Addams was eight years old. His second wife was Anna Hosteler Haldeman, the widow of a miller in Freeport.<ref name=":0">{{cite book|last=Knight|first=Louise W.|title=Citizen|pages=24, 45}}</ref>

During her childhood, Addams had big dreams of doing something useful in the world. As a voracious reader, she became interested in the poor from her reading of [[Charles Dickens]]. Inspired by his works and by her own mother's kindness to the Cedarville poor, Addams decided to become a doctor so that she could live and work among the poor.

Addams's father encouraged her to pursue higher education but close to home. She was eager to attend the new college for women, [[Smith College]] in Massachusetts; but her father required her to attend nearby Rockford Female Seminary (now [[Rockford University]]), in [[Rockford, Illinois]].<ref name="Cullen-DuPont 2000" />

Her experience at Rockford put her in a first wave of U.S. women to receive a college education. She excelled in this all women environment. She edited the college newspaper, was the valedictorian, participated in the debate club and led the class of 1881. Addams recognized that she and others who were engaged in post secondary education would have new opportunities and challenges. She expressed this in ''Bread Givers'' (1880), a speech she gave her junior year.<ref>{{cite book|last=Shields|first=P.|year=2017|title=Jane Addams: Progressive Pioneer of Peace, Philosophy, Sociology, Social Work and Public Administration|location=New York|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-3-319-50646-3|page=viii}}</ref> She noted the "change which has taken place{{nbsp}}... in the ambition and aspirations of women."<ref name=breadgivers>{{cite book|last=Addams|first=Jane|title=Jane Addams: A Centennial Reader|year=1960|publisher=The MacMillan Company|location=New York|editor-last1=Johnson|editor-first1=Emily Cooper|editor-last2=Dungan|editor-first2=Margaret E.|chapter=Bread Givers|orig-date=Originally published April 1880 in the ''Daily Register'', Rockford, from an oration by Jane Addams|pages=103–104|oclc=1144806099}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://janeaddams.ramapo.edu/2019/05/cassandra-and-bread-givers-the-college-speeches-of-jane-addams/|title=Cassandra and Bread Givers – The College Speeches of Jane Addams|last1=Shields|first1=Patricia M.|last2=Hajo|first2=Cathy Moran|website=Jane Addams Papers Project|date=15 May 2019|access-date=4 March 2024}}</ref> In the process of developing their intellect and direct labor, something new was emerging. Educated women of her generation wished "not to be a man nor like a man" but claim "the same right to independent thought and action." Each young woman was gaining "a new confidence in her possibilities, and a fresher hope in her steady progress."<ref name=breadgivers/> At 20, Addams recognized a changing cultural environment and was learning the skills at Rockford to lead the future settlement movement.<ref>Wholeben, Belinda M., and Mary Weaks-Baxter, (2023) 'Jane Addams’s Education, Hull House, and Current-Day Civic-Engagement Practices in Higher Education: Coming Full Circle', in P. Shields, M. Hamington, and J. Soeters (eds), ''The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams''. Oxford Academic.  {{isbn|9780197544532}}</ref>
 
Whilst at Rockford, her readings of [[Thomas Carlyle]], [[John Ruskin]], [[Leo Tolstoy]] and others became significant influences.<ref>{{Citation |last=Hamington |first=Maurice |title=Jane Addams |date=2022 |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2022/entries/addams-jane/ |encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |edition=Fall 2022 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=2022-08-09}}</ref> After graduating from Rockford in 1881,<ref name="Cullen-DuPont 2000" /> with a collegiate certificate and membership in [[Phi Beta Kappa]], she still hoped to attend Smith to earn a proper B.A. That summer, her father died unexpectedly from a sudden case of [[appendicitis]]. Each child inherited roughly $50,000 (equivalent to ${{Formatprice|{{Inflation|US|50000|1881}}}} in 2016).

That fall, Addams, her sister Alice, Alice's husband Harry, and their stepmother, Anna Haldeman Addams, moved to Philadelphia so that the three young people could pursue medical educations. Harry was already trained in medicine and did further studies at the [[University of Pennsylvania]]. Jane and Alice completed their first year of medical school at the [[Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania]],<ref name="Cullen-DuPont 2000" /> but Jane's health problems, a spinal operation<ref name="Cullen-DuPont 2000" /> and a [[nervous breakdown]] prevented her from completing the degree. She was filled with sadness at her failure. Her stepmother Anna was also ill, so the entire family canceled their plans to stay two years and returned to Cedarville.<ref>{{cite book|last=Knight|first=Louise W.|title=Citizen|year= 2005|pages=[https://archive.org/details/citizenjaneaddam0000knig/page/77 77–79, 109, 119–120]|publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=0-226-44699-9|url=https://archive.org/details/citizenjaneaddam0000knig/page/77}}</ref> her brother-in-law Harry performed surgery on her back, to straighten it. He then advised that she not pursue studies but, instead, travel. In August 1883, she set off for a two-year tour of Europe with her stepmother, traveling some of the time with friends and family who joined them. Addams decided that she did not have to become a doctor to be able to help the poor.<ref>{{cite book|last=Knight|first=Louise W.|title=Citizen|pages=124–25, 130–31, 138–39}}</ref>

Upon her return home in June 1887, she lived with her stepmother in Cedarville and spent winters with her in Baltimore. Addams, still filled with vague ambition, sank into depression, unsure of her future and feeling useless leading the conventional life expected of a well-to-do young woman. She wrote long letters to her friend from Rockford Seminary, [[Ellen Gates Starr]], mostly about Christianity and books but sometimes about her despair.<ref>{{cite book|last=Knight|first=Louise W.|title=Citizen|pages=139–142 }}</ref>

Her nephew was [[James Weber Linn]] (1876–1939) who taught English at the [[University of Chicago]] and served in the [[Illinois General Assembly]]. Linn also wrote books and newspaper articles.<ref>'Illinois Blue Book 1939–1940,' Biographical Sketch of James Weber Linn, pp. 154–155</ref>