More than a simple woman, an American heroine.

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College Directory Columnist

May 13, 2010

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Ellen Starr was born in Laona, Illinois. She studied at the Rockford Female Seminary (1877-78) where she met Jane Addams, who years later was to be priced with the Nobel Peace Prize. Their friendship lasted many years.

During ten years Ellen worked as a devoted teacher of elementary education in the slums of Chicago. Always dedicated to childhood, she taught such writers as Shakespeare, Dante and Robert Browning to children who couldn't afford private school education.

She was a living example of what she preached about community labor. She travelled to Britain to learn bookbinding, just to increase the possibilities of her learning pupils

In 1888 she left to Europe in a tour she shared with Jane Addams, during which they discovered Toynbee Hall. It was located in one of London's slum areas, and served as a settlement house for the less fortunate. They decided, then, to establish a settlement house in Chicago.

In 1889 they searched for a house in a low-income area in Chicago. The one they found was built by Charles Hull in 1856. With the help of local benefactors, Ellen and Jane founded what they called Hull House. It had been a factory and a used furniture store and also was a home for the elderly poor. They began to create a community center.

Jane and Ellen encouraged the wealthy to give money and time to their settlement house. Volunteers provided childcare. They took care of the sick and counseled people. In two years Hull House was helping over 2000 people per week. Kindergarten classes were taught in the morning. Club meetings for students met after school. There were night school classes for adult education. In summary it was a kindergarten, a day nursery, an infancy care centre and a center for continuing education for adults.

Hull House grew. They added an art gallery and a public kitchen. There was a coffee house, a gym with a swimming pool, a boarding house for girls. There was also an employment agency and a library, a bookbindery, drama group, and a labor museum. That is Hull House offered in addition to schooling, medical care, legal aid, child care, music, art, and drama to the underprivileged.

Besides working in Hull House, Ellen Starr also participated in the campaign to reform industrial working conditions and mainly child labor laws in Chicago. She joined as a member the Women's Trade Union League. She was a woman of strong ideals and values; perhaps too utopist, but she dedicated her life and her efforts to such ideals. Her beliefs were firmly anti-industrialization.

After many years of doubts and different situations with the Catholic Church, in 1920 Ellen converted to Catholicism, only when she believed the Church was really occupied in teaching social justice seriously. She continued for years fighting and working in campaigns against child labor, not always counting with the church blessings.

In spite of these differences, in 1930 she retired to a Roman Catholic convent in Suffern, New York County, where she died on 10 February 1940.

My profounds respects to her.