Site of Social Justice Advocacy, or Home of Godly Women? Interpreting Women’s Work at the Frances Willard House Museum

In 1900, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) transformed the Evanston, Illinois home of their late president, Frances Willard, into one of the first house museums dedicated to a woman in the United States. For over ninety years, WCTU members used the collections to situate Willard’s social reform career in the framework of domestic and religious duty. Recent efforts by historians and community members to reinterpret the collections to demonstrate Willard’s significance to a progressive, nondenominational, and diverse audience has sparked contentious debate over the ownership of the museum. Drawing on archival materials, published texts, and oral history interviews, this case study examines the use of space and artifacts, as well as the verbal sparring such choices have provoked. The controversy over the Willard House collections suggests that when women’s political and professional activity is central to a house museum’s significance, it becomes an especially contested commemorative site.