The Ridge Historical Society
Mother’s Day – Part 7 on the Hofer Sisters – the League of American Mothers
By Carol Flynn
Today is Mother’s Day, the perfect day to continue the series on Andrea Hofer Proudfoot, the fourth of the five Hofer sisters, who started the League of American Mothers.
In November of 1893, Andrea, 27, married Frederick William Proudfoot, an attorney from Englewood whose practice included legal work with the Chicago Board of Trade.
One of Proudfoot’s wedding gifts to Andrea was an estate in North Beverly known as “Oakhurst” located at today’s address of 9333 S. Vanderpoel Avenue. The street was previously known as Prospect and then Howard Court. Andrea and Frederick moved into the house and started a family; six children were born to them between 1894 and 1907.
Around 1895, Andrea and her younger sister Elizabeth (Elsa) Hofer Schreiber started a school in the Proudfoot home they called the Froebellian School for Young Women. This school trained women to be kindergarten teachers, based on the principles of Friedrich Froebel, a Prussian educator who founded kindergartens in Germany in the 1830s. He based his schools and training programs on the principles originally developed in the 1700s by Swiss educator Johan Heinrich Pestalozzi.
The school incorporated much more than classroom work, giving the women who trained there a variety of hands-on experiences. By 1900, the facilities included: the kindergarten teacher training program; a kindergarten for young children; boys’ and girls’ clubs; a grade school that continued the kindergarten principles and included industrial training in onsite workshops; high school level classes for girls; a playground open to all children; and a summer school program (then called vacation schools) for disadvantaged inner-city children. During the summers, the school also ran professional-level programs for educators as the Longwood Summer School.
Central to this operation were also education and support programs for mothers. In 1895, Andrea formed the League of American Mothers that rose to national prominence. Local Leagues were set up all around the country. Any mother or teacher could join, there were no dues; the League was largely operated and funded personally by Andrea. Groups of mothers met frequently at the Proudfoot home and were involved in all of the school programs.
A multi-year course of self-study for mothers was developed through the League, using materials written by Andrea. The books included “A Mother’s Ideals: A Kindergarten Mother’s Conception of Family Life” for the first year of study, published in 1897; and “A Year with the Mother-Play,” for the second year, published in 1902. For mothers who could not afford to purchase the books, thousands of “travelling libraries” were set up around the country.
Andrea dedicated the first book, “A Mother’s Ideals,” to her own mother, Mari Ruef Hofer. Andrea wrote: “To My Mother – Who has been preserved to the simplicities of life through having child companions; whose duty toward the home has kept her from pursuing schoolishness; who has studied more deeply into the affections than into psychology; and who loves humanity because it has been given an impulse onward through her as a channel, and an impulse upward through her spiritual striving for her children.”
Teachers-in-training boarded at the school. All of this went on in the Proudfoot home. It can only be imagined what a busy place this property in North Beverly must have been.
Related to all of this, Andrea started a new magazine, Child-Garden of Story, Song and Play. This magazine was published from their house in North Beverly, and the subscription price was $1.00 for twelve issues.
Child-Garden was described by Andrea as “the national organ of the League of American Mothers.” Each issue included poetry and stories for and by children, ideas for kindergarten teachers, and a section related to the League with subject matter for mothers’ programs, advice and discussion. Mothers were invited to correspond directly with Andrea at her Beverly address, and many did. Some of their letters were included in the magazine.
Andrea offered educated and practical advice to mothers. In the December 1900 edition of Child-Garden, for example, Andrea advised mothers to ignore advertisements and articles about diseases and “quackery patent medicine concerns” and to get advice from trusted medical professionals when needed. Child-Garden refused to carry such questionable medical content even though it cost them advertising revenue.
Child-Garden offered advice like “we expect too much from punishment – it will not take the place of firm, kind, loving, intelligent watchfulness.” Another piece of advice was that no two people were alike and children should not be forced to conform too much one way or another; they should be allowed to work things out.
Mothers wrote heart-felt letters to Andrea with statements like, "I feel as if you were my friend."
Leading up to a national congress on motherhood in 1900, in which Andrea and the League were expected to play a major role, one newspaper wrote, “Mrs. Proudfoot is a pioneer in the mothers’ work of this country. She is urging the mothers of this land into a higher respect for their calling and demands that they shall put it upon a professional basis through study and demonstration.”
The school in North Beverly ran for about nine years. In December of 1914, there was a curious article in the Chicago Tribune that a fire had occurred in the now-empty building – at the time, Andrea was spending a lot of time in Vienna, Austria, with her children who were there for educational reasons. A neighbor all but accused Andrea of arson, and the article wondered if charges would be forth coming. No more was found on this and within a few months Andrea was back to being prominently mentioned in the paper for heading a Republican women’s group, so apparently the charges were baseless.
This brings us to one more topic related to Andrea and her Hofer sisters – their involvement in politics and the international peace and amnesty movement, which will be covered in the next post.