Anna Adams Gordon

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Anna Adams Gordon

American social reformer

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Born:: July 21, 1853, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.

Died:: June 15, 1931, Castile, New York (aged 77)

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Anna Adams Gordon (born July 21, 1853, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died June 15, 1931, Castile, New York) was an American social reformer who was a strong and effective force in the American temperance movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Gordon studied at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College) in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and at Lasell Seminary in Auburndale, Massachusetts. In 1877, at a Boston revival meeting held by evangelist Dwight L. Moody, she met Frances Willard, and within a short time she had become Willard’s private secretary. She took up residence with her in Evanston, Illinois, and in 1879 she followed her friend and employer into the work of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Gordon traveled throughout the country for a number of years, lecturing and organizing local branches and children’s auxiliaries of the WCTU. She was particularly interested in the organization’s appeal to children through the Loyal Temperance Union, for which she wrote a number of marching songs. She became superintendent of juvenile work for the new World Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1891.

On the death of Willard in 1898, Gordon became vice president of the national WCTU under Lillian M.N. Stevens. Gordon published The Beautiful Life of Frances E. Willard in 1898 and What Frances E. Willard Said in 1905. In addition to founding the Young Campaigners for Prohibition (1910), she succeeded Stevens as president (1914) of the WCTU and promptly focused the organization on the campaign for a federal prohibition amendment. During World War I she was instrumental in persuading President Woodrow Wilson to take various steps short of outright prohibition, such as prohibiting the use of foodstuffs for the manufacture of alcoholic beverages, and with the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in January 1919 she urged the WCTU to become interested in enforcement. She also turned the organization’s attention to other causes, including Americanization of immigrants, child welfare, and the condition of women in industry.

Having been elected president of the World WCTU in 1922, Gordon resigned the presidency of the national WCTU in 1925 to devote her time to the world organization. Other books by her include Toots and Other Stories (1906), White Ribbon Hymnal (1911), Young People’s Temperance Chorus Book (1911), What Lillian M.N. Stevens Said (1914), Marching Songs for Young Crusaders (1916), Jubilee Songs (1923), and Everybody Sing (1924).

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temperance movement

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temperance movement

social history

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Last Updated: Apr 17, 2025 • Article History

Key People:: Mary Ashton Rice Livermore; Annie Turner Wittenmyer; Mary Hannah Hanchett Hunt; Ella Reeve Bloor; Anna Howard Shaw

Related Topics:: alcoholism; prohibition; teetotalism

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temperance movement, movement dedicated to promoting moderation and, more often, complete abstinence in the use of intoxicating liquor (see alcohol consumption). Although an abstinence pledge had been introduced by churches as early as 1800, the earliest temperance organizations seem to have been those founded at Saratoga, New York, in 1808 and in Massachusetts in 1813. The movement spread rapidly under the influence of the churches; by 1833 there were 6,000 local societies in several U.S. states.

Some temperance advocates, notably Carry Nation, worked to great effect outside the organized movement. The earliest European organizations were formed in Ireland; the movement began to make effective progress in 1829 with the formation of the Ulster Temperance Society. Thereafter, the movement spread throughout Ireland and to Great Britain. The Church of England Temperance Society was founded in 1862 and reconstituted in 1873. In 1969 it was united with the National Police Court Mission to form the Church of England Council for Social Aid. On the continent, the earliest temperance organizations seem to have been in existence in Norway and Sweden in 1836 and 1837.

Temperance and abstinence became the objects of education and legislation in many regions. Besides combining moral and political action, the modern temperance movements were characterized by international scope and the organized cooperation of women. The first international temperance organization appears to have been the Order of Good Templars (formed in 1851 at Utica, New York), which gradually spread over the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Scandinavia, several other European countries, Australasia, India, parts of Africa, and South America. In 1909 a world prohibition conference in London resulted in the foundation of an International Prohibition Confederation.