Jane Addams and Mary Rozet Smith
Jane Addams (1860-1935) and Mary Smith (1868-1934) were both daughters of privilege who grew up to have a deep sense of social responsibility. Mary was by far the more retiring of the two, but when she heard of a new settlement house, founded in Chicago and specifically run by women, she was one of the first enthusiastic volunteers. Mary and Jane met within a month of the opening of Hull House in 1889, and by 1891 they had become involved in an intimate and romantic relationship. When she was worn out from her endless social service work, in 1892 Jane referred to Mary as “my sweet nurse,” and wrote to her sister Alice that among the indulgences Mary provided were raw oysters (!) and “delightful rubbings.”
But Mary wasn’t Jane’s first romantic partnership. In what may have been her first love, she became involved with Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940), the daughter of an Illinois farming family. Both Jane and Ellen had fathers with liberal ideas about female education, and they both ended up at Rockford Female Seminary, a women’s college in northern Illinois. They quickly became friends, talking for hours about literature, science, religion, and progressive social ideals.
Ellen only got to stay at Rockford for one year. Family financial trouble forced her to drop out and take a teaching job, leaving Jane lonely and miserable. It must have rankled for Ellen too, to have to leave behind the idyllic college world of high-flown ideas to face the cold realities of earning a living. While Ellen was gone, Jane became attached to a young teacher, Sarah Anderson who was the center of a group of progressive thinkers at Rockford.
After she left school in 1881, Jane kept up a correspondence with both Sarah and Ellen, but it wasn’t till her poor health ended her hopes of finishing medical school that Jane got back together with her two friends. Jane had planned to become a doctor, but after only one semester at Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, terrible back pain from curvature of the spine forced her to drop out. This must have been a bitter disappointment, and Jane consoled herself by travelling in Europe from 1883-1885 with Sarah and Ellen. When they were in London, they visited Toynbee Hall, an early settlement house, based on the idea that middle and upper class people who wanted to help the poor should live with them side by side.
Jane and Ellen were inspired by the British settlement house movement, and when they got back to Chicago, they began the work to open Hull House. Ellen must have experienced some jealousy when Jane and Mary became such a decided couple, but she had a sharp and somewhat prickly personality, and understood she was not the warm, suppportive wife Jane needed. She indicated some of the pain she experieced when she wrote Jane much later, “I can see . . . that it was inevitable that I should disappoint you. I think I have always, at any rate for a great many years, been thankful that Mary came along to supply what you needed.” [italics added] Ellen continued to work at Hull House for 30 years, but her relationship with Jane was never as warm as it had been. She stayed at Hull House until 1920, when an operation on her spine left her paralyzed. In 1930, Ellen entered the Convent of the Holy Child in Suffern, New York, where she died in 1940.
Although Mary and Jane’s relationship grew close and deep, Mary never lived at Hull House because of her responsibilities in caring for her elderly parents. She did stay at Hull House regularly though, sometimes for long periods. Jane also visited the Smith home, during the brief periods she could be pried away from her work at Hull House. Although some scholars insist that their relationship was probably just a warm friendship and not sexual, the fact that Jane and Mary always slept in the same bed seems to provide substantial evidence that they had a physical connection. This insistance on sharing a bed was quite public—even when they travelled, they made sure in advance that hotels placed them in a room with a double bed.
Mary not only supported Jane on an emotional level, but her fortune was quite literally the lifeblood of Hull House. Jane had quickly expended her family money on the project, and Mary’s donations became vital to its continuing work. Mary also had the financial savvy to transform Hull House into a corporation, with a board that could work to raise funds to keep the organization going. In addition to supporting Hull House, Mary gave Jane a personal stipend of $250 a month (the equivalent of around $6000 in 2020). Although it was hard for Jane to accept the money, she “weakly accepted it,” as she wrote in a letter to Mary in 1895, justifying it to herself no doubt by giving much of it away to friends and relatives in need.
While Jane was the driving force behind Hull House, her health had always been precarious, and Mary devoted much of her energy to protecting Jane from her own excesses and shielding her from the demands on her time and limited energy. Whenever she could, she dragged Jane away on vacations, and in 1909, she paid the majority of their mutual purchase of a house called Yule Craig in Hull’s Cove, which is part of beautiful Bar Harbor on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. She intentionally chose a tiny cottage to prevent Jane from filling the house with guests and a small yard, with only a few lilacs and peonies to maintain.
Jane had loved the peace and natural beauty of Maine since at least the summer of 1895, when she and Mary had stopped there for a few days after attending lectures by Ellen Starr in Chatauqua, New York. Owning their own home there delighted her. Shortly after the purchase, Jane wrote warmly to Mary, “Our house—it gives me quite a thrill to write the words,” and she later reveled in the “healing domesticity” they found in Bar Harbor. She also found it “a perfectly heavenly place to write,” and it was during the first summer and early fall at Yule Craig that she wrote her most personal and influential book, Twenty Years at Hull House, published in 1910.
In spite of Mary’s efforts, Jane continued to be social, and she made the most of visiting her wealthy neighbors in Bar Harbor, saying she “could raise more money in a single month in Bar Harbor than all the rest of the year back home in Chicago.” One of her closest friends during her Maine summers was Louise Bowen (1859-1953), a Chicago philanthropist who had long been a supporter of Hull House. The Bowens had also fallen in love with Mt. Desert Island, building the fabulous estate of Baymeath in Hulls Cove in 1895. In 1932, Jane sold Yule Craig to Harry Hill Thorndike, who changed its name to Thorncraig and expanded the cottage considerably.
Jane’s health continued to decline as she grew older, and she came close to death in 1934, when she had a heart attack at Mary’s family home in Chicago. As usual, the more robust Mary nursed Jane, paying little attention to her own cold, which turned into pneumonia. She died quite quickly, leaving Jane surprised and grieved to be left on her own. Jane survived her heart attack sufficiently to go back to work at Hull House, plan work on a new book, and travel to Washington, D.C. to speak for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom at an event called the “Round-the-World Peace Broadcast” on May 4, 1935. Back home in Chicago, she woke on May 15 with a sharp pain in her side. Surgery revealed she had advanced cancer, and she died on May 21.
Further reading about Jane and Mary:
Diliberto, Gioia. A Useful Woman: The Early Life of Jane Addams. New York: Scribner, 1999.
Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Columbia UP, 1991.
Faderman, Lillian. To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America - A History. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
Joslin, Katherine. Jane Addams: A Writer's Life. Urbana, Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2004.
Schoenberg, Nara. “Outing Jane Addams.” Chicago Tribune, February 6, 2007.
Streitmatter, Rodger. “Mary Rozet Smith and Jane Addams 1891-1934: Breaking New Ground in Social Reform and Global Peace.” In Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples, Boston: Beacon Press, 2012.
Jane Addams Digital Edition. https://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/
Richards, Dell. Superstars: Twelve Lesbians Who Changed the World. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993
But Mary wasn’t Jane’s first romantic partnership. In what may have been her first love, she became involved with Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940), the daughter of an Illinois farming family. Both Jane and Ellen had fathers with liberal ideas about female education, and they both ended up at Rockford Female Seminary, a women’s college in northern Illinois. They quickly became friends, talking for hours about literature, science, religion, and progressive social ideals.
Ellen only got to stay at Rockford for one year. Family financial trouble forced her to drop out and take a teaching job, leaving Jane lonely and miserable. It must have rankled for Ellen too, to have to leave behind the idyllic college world of high-flown ideas to face the cold realities of earning a living. While Ellen was gone, Jane became attached to a young teacher, Sarah Anderson who was the center of a group of progressive thinkers at Rockford.
After she left school in 1881, Jane kept up a correspondence with both Sarah and Ellen, but it wasn’t till her poor health ended her hopes of finishing medical school that Jane got back together with her two friends. Jane had planned to become a doctor, but after only one semester at Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, terrible back pain from curvature of the spine forced her to drop out. This must have been a bitter disappointment, and Jane consoled herself by travelling in Europe from 1883-1885 with Sarah and Ellen. When they were in London, they visited Toynbee Hall, an early settlement house, based on the idea that middle and upper class people who wanted to help the poor should live with them side by side.
Jane and Ellen were inspired by the British settlement house movement, and when they got back to Chicago, they began the work to open Hull House. Ellen must have experienced some jealousy when Jane and Mary became such a decided couple, but she had a sharp and somewhat prickly personality, and understood she was not the warm, suppportive wife Jane needed. She indicated some of the pain she experieced when she wrote Jane much later, “I can see . . . that it was inevitable that I should disappoint you. I think I have always, at any rate for a great many years, been thankful that Mary came along to supply what you needed.” [italics added] Ellen continued to work at Hull House for 30 years, but her relationship with Jane was never as warm as it had been. She stayed at Hull House until 1920, when an operation on her spine left her paralyzed. In 1930, Ellen entered the Convent of the Holy Child in Suffern, New York, where she died in 1940.
Although Mary and Jane’s relationship grew close and deep, Mary never lived at Hull House because of her responsibilities in caring for her elderly parents. She did stay at Hull House regularly though, sometimes for long periods. Jane also visited the Smith home, during the brief periods she could be pried away from her work at Hull House. Although some scholars insist that their relationship was probably just a warm friendship and not sexual, the fact that Jane and Mary always slept in the same bed seems to provide substantial evidence that they had a physical connection. This insistance on sharing a bed was quite public—even when they travelled, they made sure in advance that hotels placed them in a room with a double bed.
Mary not only supported Jane on an emotional level, but her fortune was quite literally the lifeblood of Hull House. Jane had quickly expended her family money on the project, and Mary’s donations became vital to its continuing work. Mary also had the financial savvy to transform Hull House into a corporation, with a board that could work to raise funds to keep the organization going. In addition to supporting Hull House, Mary gave Jane a personal stipend of $250 a month (the equivalent of around $6000 in 2020). Although it was hard for Jane to accept the money, she “weakly accepted it,” as she wrote in a letter to Mary in 1895, justifying it to herself no doubt by giving much of it away to friends and relatives in need.
While Jane was the driving force behind Hull House, her health had always been precarious, and Mary devoted much of her energy to protecting Jane from her own excesses and shielding her from the demands on her time and limited energy. Whenever she could, she dragged Jane away on vacations, and in 1909, she paid the majority of their mutual purchase of a house called Yule Craig in Hull’s Cove, which is part of beautiful Bar Harbor on Mt. Desert Island, Maine. She intentionally chose a tiny cottage to prevent Jane from filling the house with guests and a small yard, with only a few lilacs and peonies to maintain.
Jane had loved the peace and natural beauty of Maine since at least the summer of 1895, when she and Mary had stopped there for a few days after attending lectures by Ellen Starr in Chatauqua, New York. Owning their own home there delighted her. Shortly after the purchase, Jane wrote warmly to Mary, “Our house—it gives me quite a thrill to write the words,” and she later reveled in the “healing domesticity” they found in Bar Harbor. She also found it “a perfectly heavenly place to write,” and it was during the first summer and early fall at Yule Craig that she wrote her most personal and influential book, Twenty Years at Hull House, published in 1910.
In spite of Mary’s efforts, Jane continued to be social, and she made the most of visiting her wealthy neighbors in Bar Harbor, saying she “could raise more money in a single month in Bar Harbor than all the rest of the year back home in Chicago.” One of her closest friends during her Maine summers was Louise Bowen (1859-1953), a Chicago philanthropist who had long been a supporter of Hull House. The Bowens had also fallen in love with Mt. Desert Island, building the fabulous estate of Baymeath in Hulls Cove in 1895. In 1932, Jane sold Yule Craig to Harry Hill Thorndike, who changed its name to Thorncraig and expanded the cottage considerably.
Jane’s health continued to decline as she grew older, and she came close to death in 1934, when she had a heart attack at Mary’s family home in Chicago. As usual, the more robust Mary nursed Jane, paying little attention to her own cold, which turned into pneumonia. She died quite quickly, leaving Jane surprised and grieved to be left on her own. Jane survived her heart attack sufficiently to go back to work at Hull House, plan work on a new book, and travel to Washington, D.C. to speak for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom at an event called the “Round-the-World Peace Broadcast” on May 4, 1935. Back home in Chicago, she woke on May 15 with a sharp pain in her side. Surgery revealed she had advanced cancer, and she died on May 21.
Further reading about Jane and Mary:
Diliberto, Gioia. A Useful Woman: The Early Life of Jane Addams. New York: Scribner, 1999.
Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Columbia UP, 1991.
Faderman, Lillian. To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America - A History. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
Joslin, Katherine. Jane Addams: A Writer's Life. Urbana, Chicago: U of Illinois P, 2004.
Schoenberg, Nara. “Outing Jane Addams.” Chicago Tribune, February 6, 2007.
Streitmatter, Rodger. “Mary Rozet Smith and Jane Addams 1891-1934: Breaking New Ground in Social Reform and Global Peace.” In Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples, Boston: Beacon Press, 2012.
Jane Addams Digital Edition. https://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/
Richards, Dell. Superstars: Twelve Lesbians Who Changed the World. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993