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.

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