- Frances Willard (1839-1898) was photographed on her bicycle “Gladys,” which she learned to ride at age 53. Willard was the best known and most dynamic president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and founder of the World W.C.T.U. She was a Page 15 →pioneer suffragist, pacifist, and educator, and was the first Dean of Women at Northwestern University. Witty, resolute, and progressive, she greatly influenced her students despite opposition from Charles Fowler, conservative president of the college - and the former fiancé with whom Willard had broken ties. She said, “Dr. Fowler has the will of Napoleon, I have the will of Queen Elizabeth.” She left, explaining: “I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum,” which is exactly what she turned it to when she moved on to the National W.C.T.U. and made it into the largest women’s organization in the country. It was typically venturesome that she took up cycling when she did. Her own delightful account of the adventure is in her 1895 book, A Wheel Within a Wheel.
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