The temperance organization: the WCTU and Julia E. Work

1882 – 1932

The standing organization: for the generation before the suffrage fight, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union was Mishawaka's standing women's organization — the body through which the town's women acted in public, on the temperance question and, through it, on the care of dependent children. The orphanage that crusade founded stands whole in this build's Charities section; what stands here is the organizing, which the record names with unusual precision. In May 1882 three Mishawaka women — Julia E. Work, Myra Clark, and Mrs. Henry Milburn, members of the local union — attended the state WCTU convention at Indianapolis and heard Frances Willard, the national president, make the case for a children's home. Palmer C. Perkins, a Mishawaka businessman, put up 2,000 dollars toward the home on condition the town match it, and the St. Joseph County WCTU acted within weeks: the St. Joseph County Orphans Home opened in July 1882 on Vistula Street, now Lincolnway West, and held twenty-two children by December. The county union, not a congregation and not the township, was the founding body, and its officers and supporters were the society women of the two cities.

Julia E. Work's career, as the record gives it: Work took the superintendency of the home on 20 June 1882 and held it until February 1891 — nearly nine years in which the institution was, in the record's telling, hers. Her relations with the board that governed the home broke down; the feud between Work and the board's society women is carried in the Charities section in both of its tellings and is not reconciled here. She resigned on 28 February 1891 and carried the county contracts with her to a new institution, the Northern Indiana Orphans' Home at La Porte, which opened 18 March 1891. A third institution followed: the Julia E. Work Training School at Plymouth, founded 1899, which she ran until 1919. She died at Los Angeles on 9 January 1932. One woman thus stands at the head of children's institutions in three Indiana counties across thirty-seven years, each of them founded out of the temperance movement's organizing — the largest institution-building record held by any Mishawaka woman of her century. Her modern historian reports allegations of abuse and neglect of children under her supervision; the allegations stand in this build as reported allegations, unadjudicated in any record reached, and they are printed at that strength and no stronger.

The local union's own record, and its limit: beyond the three women of 1882, the Mishawaka union's own course — its organizing date as a local body, its officers, its membership at any year — is not carried in any record this build has reached. The county union's acts are documented through the orphanage crusade; the local union's internal record is not. The settling sources are the Mishawaka Enterprise run and the Indiana WCTU's own state records; until they are read, the union stands here at the size of its one fully documented campaign.

Sources:

1. St. Joseph County Public Library, Michiana Memory features, "Women on a mission in 1882" and "Intrigue at the orphanage" (South Bend Tribune, 2008) — the May 1882 convention and the Willard address, the three Mishawaka women named, the Perkins gift and the town match, the July 1882 opening and the twenty-two children of December 1882, the board feud and the resignation of 28 February 1891, and the La Porte removal.
2. Donna M. Nelson, history of Julia E. Work's institutions — the superintendency dates of 20 June 1882 to February 1891, the Northern Indiana Orphans' Home opening of 18 March 1891, the Plymouth training school of 1899 and her tenure to 1919, her death at Los Angeles on 9 January 1932, and the reported allegations of abuse and neglect, printed here as reported and unadjudicated.
3. De Kever, commissioned history of Mishawaka — the orphans' home's place in the city's charitable record; the institution's full course stands in this build's Charities section.