Abbott, Edith, 1876-1957

Edith Abbott was born in Grand Island, Nebraska in 1876, daughter of the state's first Lieutenant Governor, Othman A. Abbott. She received her A.B. from the University of Nebraska in 1901, her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1905, and spent the year 1906-1907 in post-graduate study at the University of London. Upon her return to Chicago in 1908, she became a resident of Hull House, where she remained until 1920. During this same period, 1908-1920, she served as Associate Director of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy at the University of Chicago. In 1913, Edith Abbott formally joined the University of Chicago faculty on which she remained until 1953. From 1924 until 1942 she was Dean of the School of Social Service Administration, and from 1942 until 1953, Dean Emeritus. She died in 1957.

Grace Abbott was born two years after her sister Edith, in 1878. She received her Ph.B. from Grand Island College in 1898, her Ph.M. from the University of Chicago in 1909, and studied law at the University of Chicago Law School. She taught intermittently during this period, at the secondary-school level. In 1908 she also moved into Hull House, and there her interests were turned increasingly toward social problems. In 1915 she became the first Director of the newly organized Immigrant's Protective League, and in 1917 she was appointed to a position in the Child Labor Division of the United States Children's Bureau. Upon the resignation of Julia Lathrop, first Chief of the Bureau in 1921, Grace Abbott was appointed to that position. She held it until 1934. From 1934 until her death in 1939 she joined her sister in Chicago as Professor of Public Welfare at the University of Chicago and Editor of Social Service Review.

This collection reflects the close association of the Abbott sisters throughout their careers, as well as the central position which they held in the formative period of social service in the United States. Their correspondence and interests encompassed local, state, national, and international aspects of social welfare. Among their regular correspondents were Julia Lathrop, Jane Addams, Florence Kelly, Julius Rosenwald, Julius Mack, Frances Perkins, Lillian Wald, and Felix Frankfurter. A few of the many organizations in which one or the other took an active interest were the American Association of Social Workers, American Child Health Association, Better Homes in America, Chicago Recreation Committee, Child Labor Committee of Illinois, National Civil Service Reform League, Hull House, Immigrant's Protective League, International Penal and Penitentiary Commission, National Conference on Social Work, Social Science Research Committee, Twentieth Century Fund, United States Children's Bureau, and others. Edith's interests were centered on the status of women in industry and the establishment of high professional standards in social work education. Grace Abbott's career was largely devoted to the conditions of child labor and to maternal and child health matters. The sisters shared an early interest in the problems of the immigrant, and later on in the relief and public assistance programs of the New Deal.