Salem Woman’s Club
11 Barton Square (building no longer standing)
The home of the Salem Woman’s Club’s first president,
Dr. Sarah E. Sherman, was located here. Organized in 1894 and incorporated
in 1899 “to broaden and strengthen the moral, social and intellectual
life of its members, and through them, to make itself a power for
good in the community,” the club’s motto was “The
union of all for the good of all.”78
Other founders included Emily E. Agge, Emma S. Almy, Ellen A. Brown,
Lena C. Emery, Katherine L. Felt, Frances S. Johnson, Caroline B.
Kemble, Fanny S. Price, and Emeline D. Whipple. The club not only
provided intellectual stimulus and a social life, but opportunities
for members to serve their community. The club sponsored lectures
on subjects from forestry and architecture to historical and current
movements, legislative goings-on, philanthropy, education reform,
and social services. They sponsored concerts, plays, teas, and other
events to raise money for their scholarship fund and Salem charitable
organizations. In 1911 and 1912, the Salem Woman’s Club focused
its fundraising efforts on a Free Bath House for Women and Girls.
In its twenty-sixth year, the club stated in its yearbook, “There
are two duties to be fulfilled in this world: the first, to give
to our own personality all the worth it is capable of possessing;
and the second is to put it at the disposal of others.”79
Notes
78. By-laws of the Salem Woman’s Club,
1899.
79. Yearbook of the Salem Woman’s Club,
1919-20.
|
