Wells, Kate Gannett (1838–1911)

American reformer and anti-suffragist. Name variations: Catherine Boott Gannett. Born on April 6, 1838, in London, England; died of acute gastritis on December 13, 1911; third daughter of American parents Ezra Stiles Gannett (a minister) and Anna (Tilden) Gannett; married Samuel Wells, on June 11, 1863; children: Stiles Gannett, Samuel, and Louisa Appleton.

Kate Gannett Wells was born in 1838 in London, England, the first of three children and only daughter of Ezra and Anna Tilden Gannett , both Americans. She was christened Catherine Boott Gannett, after a Dr. Boott who was then caring for Ezra as he recovered from a nervous breakdown. The colleague and successor of Reverend William Ellery Channing at the (Unitarian) Federal Street Church in Boston and the grandson of President Ezra Stiles of Yale College, Ezra Gannett was a descendant of Mary Chilton , one of the first English immigrants to the New World. Anna Gannett died when Kate was eight, so the young girl's childhood was shaped by her father and his austere, orderly life which focused on public service. Kate married Samuel Wells, a prominent Boston lawyer, on June 11, 1863, and this union provided the affluent leisure that allowed her to pursue her own career of public service from the 1870s until her death in 1911.

Kate Gannett Wells' choice of social causes reflected her belief that women should concern themselves only with specifically feminine issues, such as education, health, family, and moral matters. Early in her service career, she was a member of the Massachusetts Moral Education Association, which sought to combat prostitution through better education and increased charity work by Bostonian women. Better education was very much at the forefront of Wells' efforts as a member of the Woman's Education Association of Boston during the 1870s. In 1875, she was elected to the Boston School Committee for one term, and was appointed to three eight-year terms on the Massachusetts State Board of Education beginning in 1888. Wells was active in several other women's organizations, including the New England Women's Club, which she served as secretary in 1882, and the Association for the Advancement of Women. In the 1890s, she led the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association in the promotion of better health practices in working-class families.

For all her work with women and various social causes, Wells adamantly opposed women's suffrage, going so far as to declare herself a remonstrant against the woman suffrage petition presented annually to the Massachusetts legislature. As a leader in the anti-suffrage movement, Wells argued that the addition of uneducated women to the voting rolls would foster confusion and unnecessary legislation, although she acknowledged that the future presence of educated women in the political process would be beneficial. Kate Gannett Wells died at age 74 in her home in the Back Bay area of Boston on December 13, 1911, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

sources:

James, Edward T., ed. Notable American Women, 1607–1950. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1971.

Amy Cooper , M.A., M.S.I., Ann Arbor, Michigan