People

The relationships that Frances Willard maintained throughout her childhood and adolescence helped shape the woman that she became in adulthood.  Specific people influenced the early education and development of ideas that eventually became characteristic of the popular social reformer.  Frances Willard’s mother Mary Thompson Hill Willard, sister Mary Willard, friend and future sister-in-law Mary Bannister, and father Josiah Willard influenced the early ideas that Frances Willard explored throughout her life.  We remember her as a ground-breaking orator and suffragist, but a reflection to her past highlights the significance of her early influences by family and friends.