Spencer, Anna (1851–1931)

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Spencer, Anna (1851–1931)

American minister, reformer, lecturer, and writer. Born in Attleboro, Massachusetts, on April 17, 1851; died in New York City on February 12, 1931; third daughter and youngest of four children of Francis Warren Garlin and Nancy Mason (Carpenter) Garlin; attended public schools and a private college; married William Henry Spencer, on August 15, 1878 (died 1923); children: Fletcher Carpenter Spencer (b. 1879 and died in infancy); Lucy Spencer (b. 1884).

Was the first woman minister in Rhode Island; served as associate director and lecturer at New York School of Philanthropy (1903); was associate director of New York Society for Ethical Culture (1904); worked for child labor and factory inspection laws; was special lecturer at University of Wisconsin and director of the Institute of Municipal and Social Service in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1908–11); wrote over 70 magazine articles on various aspects of social services.

Born on April 17, 1851, Anna Spencer grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, a city and state with strong Quaker and abolitionist leanings. Her mother Nancy Garlin , a staunch abolitionist, supported John C. Frémont, the popular explorer and abolitionist, in his nearly successful campaign for president. Influences such as this helped shape Spencer's strong moral beliefs and her clear-eyed view of the social problems of the day. From 1869 to 1871, she taught in the Providence schools and wrote for the Providence Daily Journal. She soon began making public appearances, addressing social issues, many of them controversial, and earning a reputation for being a vibrant, compelling orator with an articulate expository style.

Disagreeing with the establishment over doctrinal issues, Spencer withdrew from the Union Congregational Church of Providence in 1876. During the next two years, she preached for the Free Religious Society, and in 1878 she married William Henry Spencer, a Unitarian minister 11 years her senior, who encouraged the increasingly liberal trend of her religious thinking. After her marriage, she sometimes preached in her husband's churches; in 1891, she was ordained and received her own pastorate at the Bell Street Chapel in Providence, a liberal, non-denominational group. Her ordination received some public notice since she was the first female minister in Rhode Island.

In 1902, the Spencer family moved to New York City where Spencer joined and became associate director of the Society for Ethical Culture. Based on Immanuel Kant's teachings that every person is an end in himself/herself and worthy as an individual, Ethical Culture was promoted as a religion by the society's director, Felix Adler. He believed that morality was based not on religious or philosophical dogma, but on community efforts to promote social welfare, an idea much in keeping with what Spencer had been preaching. She clashed with Adler, however, and left the movement after two years, although she continued her membership in Unitarian and other liberal religious groups throughout the remainder of her life.

Spencer's social concerns eventually became a more important focus for her life than religious organizations. Her work in Providence through the founding of the Society for Organizing Charities and her efforts to pass child labor and factory inspection laws laid the foundation for her future endeavors. As a member of the board of control of the State Home and School for Dependent Children, she went to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago where she spoke on the subject of "The Relation of the Church to Charities" and chaired the symposium on disadvantaged children. While in New York City, Spencer became associate director and lecturer at the School of Philanthropy, later taking teaching and administrative positions at a number of institutions, including the University of Wisconsin; the Summer School of Ethics in Madison, sponsored by the American Ethical Union; the Meadville (Pennsylvania) Theological School; the University of Chicago; and Teachers College at Columbia University.

In 1908, Spencer began writing a series of magazine articles, eventually producing over 70 of them. They appeared in scholarly journals such as The American Journal of Sociology and The International Journal of Ethics; periodicals about social work such as Forum and Survey; and popular magazines such as Harper's and Ladies' Home Journal. Her best known book, Woman's Share in Social Culture (1913), is a compilation of articles focusing on a variety of women's issues such as the difficulties of employed married women, the problems of unmarried and elderly women, and the subjects of prostitution, divorce, and suffrage. Her views echoed those of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the belief that, rather than seek equality with men, women should evolve new ethical and social arrangements based on their female talents and insights. This train of thought continues in The Family and Its Members (1923) in which she attacked the concept of "free love" as a destabilizing influence on families. She also argued against the idea that women must be economically independent in order to be fully free, acknowledging the husband as the primary provider for the family. Spencer was particularly concerned about the problem of prostitution, seeing this as a result of the economic position of women, and she campaigned for programs geared to training prostitutes for socially useful occupations. As a leader in the American Purity Alliance, she helped develop it into the American Social Hygiene Association and headed its Division of Family Relations, introducing courses on the family into high schools and colleges.

Spencer was also an active participant in several social reform movements as an advocate of temperance, women's suffrage, and pacifism. She was a member of the Rhode Island Women's Christian Temperance Union as well as the national body, the Anti-Saloon League, and the Unitarian Temperance Society. She had joined the Rhode Island Woman's Suffrage Association when she was just 17, was a close friend of Susan B. Anthony , and attended and spoke at conventions of the National Woman Suffrage Association. As a pacifist, she was on the executive committee of the National Peace and Arbitration Congress of 1907, vice-chair of the Woman's Peace Party in 1915, and president of the Woman's International League for Peace and Freedom after World War I.

Spencer succumbed to a heart attack while attending a dinner of the League of Nations Association at the age of 80. She was buried at Swan Point Cemetery in Providence.