About This Stamp
Jane Addams (1860–1935) is honored on the 10-cent Famous American Scientists stamp issued April 26, 1940. With her friend Ellen Gates Starr, Addams founded Chicago's Hull-House in 1889. Hull-House inspired the nation's settlement house movement, which provided crucial social services in poor and working-class neighborhoods. She was also the first president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, serving from 1919–1929. Addams received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, the first American woman to receive this honor. Though involved in many Progressive-era reform movements, her gravestone in Cedarville, Illinois, simply reads, "Jane Addams of Hull-House and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom." Clearly, she considered these her life's greatest achievements.