Mary A. Ahrens

Mary A. Ahrens

Mary A. Ahrens, née Jones (December 29, 1836 – ?), was an English-born American teacher, lawyer, and social reformer.

Family and education

Born Mary A. Jones in Staffordshire, England, she was the daughter of William H. Jones, a clergyman, and Ann (Brown) Jones.[1][2] When she was fifteen, the family move to America and settled in Illinois.[1]

She was married twice. In 1857 she married Philip Fellows,[2] with whom she had two sons and a daughter.[1] In 1886, she married Louis Ahrens, a lawyer and artist.[2]

Career

After raising her children, Ahrens became a teacher of black Americans, who had been emancipated not long before.[1]

Not long after her second marriage, Ahrens decided to study law.[1] She erolled in the Chicago Union College of Law, graduating with honors in 1889.[1] Her primary clients were women and children and the poor.[1] She was a strong advocate for women's suffrage, pursuing this goal through public talks, through legal efforts, and through activity in various organizations.[1][2] She is credited with helping to open school elections to women in Illinois.[3] She served as chair of the Woman's School Suffrage Association of Cook County and as vice-president of the Protective Agency for Women and Children.[1]

In 1890, she became the founding president of the Chicago Immediate Aid Society, which opened a relief station offering meals and lodging to homeless men as well as helping them find work.[4] Recognizing a similar need among women, in early 1894 she founded the Mary A. Ahrens Mission, a home for destitute women in Chicago.[2][4]

Her date of death is uncertain, but she was alive when her husband Louis died in October 1907.[5]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Willard, Frances E., and Mary A. Livermore, eds. A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life. Moulton, 1893, pp. 5-6.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Leonard, John W. "Ahrens, Mary A.". Woman's Who's Who of America: A Biographical Dictionary of Contemporary Women of the United States and Canada, 1914-1915. American Commonwealth Company, 1914, p. 40.
  3. ↑ Thomas, Joseph. Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of Biography and Mythology. Lippincott, 1896, p. 69.
  4. 1 2 Visher, John. Hand-Book of Charities. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Co., 1897, pp. 170-171.
  5. ↑ "Obituary: Louis Ahrens". The Chicago Legal News: A Journal of Legal Intelligence, vol. 40 (August 17, 1907 – August 8, 1908), p. 95.
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