About Us

The Women and the Work

In 1841, Davenport, Iowa, was a beautiful small village curled along the banks of the Mississippi River. Four hundred people lived in the village, mostly immigrants, people who came east of the Mississippi and across the oceans. Word traveled that work, land and opportunity were available in Davenport. Twenty years later almost forty times as many people claimed Davenport as home.

This population explosion defined Davenport during the 1840's and 50's. There was great opportunity for development and also great need for help in settling the families who arrived daily. Because the growth of the city was so expansive everything was in short supply. Arriving families often found themselves huddled along the riverfront in makeshift shanties because there was no available housing. As fathers went in search of work, mothers went in search of food, toting their children with them.

Women already established in the community did not turn their heads from the struggles of the newcomers. They recognized the human misery and the need for help. While the men of the community developed commercial opportunities and created jobs, their wives and daughters walked among the incoming settlers, listening and observing. Most of these women enjoyed a social position in the community afforded by the success of their husbands and fathers, and because they believed that they had an obligation to help others, they used their position in the community to fill the needs they witnessed. They asked for clothing from their friends, they gathered food from grocers and farmers, they begged businesses to donate materials and provide employment.

Their individual efforts to meet human needs became collective and coalesced in the formation of the Ladies Benevolent Society in 1849. Miss E. Andreas was a founding member. Her name is recorded in the roster of the subsequent societies that evolved until the group eventually re-named itself The Ladies Industrial Relief Society in 1886 and remained so named until 1958.

The Ladies Benevolent Society concentrated its work on helping immigrants to find homes and establish themselves in the community. But as the Civil War tormented the United States, the needs created by war eclipsed the needs of immigrants. In 1862 the group renamed itself The Soldiers' Relief Society, expanding its efforts to aid disabled soldiers and their families, as well as families left fatherless by the war. Annie Turner Wittenmyer, from Keokuk, Iowa, was the first woman who organized other women to meet the relief needs of the soldiers. Three of Wittenmyer's brothers served during the Civil War, providing a personal impetus to her already highly developed human consciousness. Wittenmyer established the Ladies Aid Society in Keokuk, and, in order to expand these efforts across the state, she corresponded with the other women who had also established aid societies in their towns and villages. She knew a likeminded spirit in her friend Miss Mary E. Shelton from Davenport. Their frequent correspondence and friendship are presumed to have led to the establishment of the Iowa Soldiers' Orphan Home in Davenport on the grounds of abandoned Civil War Camps. Some of the original cottages of the orphan home still stand in 1999 and are part of a complex named appropriately the Wittenmyer Youth Center.

Mary Shelton's friendship also brought Wittenmyer to Davenport where she was instrumental in September of 1869 in the formation of the Ladies' Christian Association, the agency that grew out of the Soldier's Relief Society. The need for soldiers' relief diminished in the years after the horror of the war itself ended. In 1863, Mrs. Wittenmyer had entered service with the Unites States Christian Commission, a national missionary organization involved in war relief efforts. Her involvement in this commission was the link to the formation of the local Ladies' Christian Association, reflecting national and state-wide trends. Wittenmyer went on to become a founding member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and served as its first president.

Seven women served on the first Board of the Ladies' Christian Association including Shelton and Wittenmyer, but thirty women from the Davenport community pledged their help, their time and work as well as their resources. They decided the most pressing community need was the plight of the homeless women. The Association rented a house at Fifth Street and Ripley Avenue, and offered the needed shelter for women and their children. This was the first time the organization claimed its own space. Initially the group had met in members homes, and later secured donated space as needed. In the economic panic of 1872, feeling the constraints of a threatened local and national economy, the women forged a relationship with the YMCA (the Young Men's Christian Association), becoming an auxiliary of this group and using their facilities at Third and Ripley Streets for office and meeting space requirements. Though the women ended this relationship four years later, the panic had prompted the Ladies' Christian Association to examine their organization and take steps to ensure its survival. They merged with the YMCA and changed their internal structure and service delivery system. They appointed a Board of Managers. Nine specific geographic areas of the city were plotted and each was assigned a ward manager. Each manager had a cadre of Friendly Visitor, women who went out into the ward as directed by the ward manager and investigated and verified needs and created solutions for these needs. Friendly Visitors provided food, clothing, furniture, and a sympathetic ear. Cash was rarely given, as each ward had a yearly budget of $5.00, drawn from the Association treasury. Monetary relief was the responsibility of Scott County. The women of the Association were responsible for the many and varied human needs.

The ward was successful. The members of the Association were committed to answering the needs of those they served and ensuring that these same people were offered opportunities to learn how to take care of their own needs. Increasingly, the women discovered the need to provide training. This discovery prompted them to change the agency's name again to more accurately reflect their work. They became the Ladies Industrial Relief Society.

The Society opened an industrial school in 1878, located in rental property in downtown Davenport. They began with sewing classes, offering women the opportunity to learn an employable skill that was also useful, if not necessary, in their private lives. The cooking school was started in 1880 and the director of this school, Miss Mary Gillett, was the first paid staff employed by the Society and its predecessors. Miss Gillett was a graduate of the School of Domestic Economy at the Iowa State Agricultural College in Ames. The cooking school was so successful, having over 125 students, that it was institutionalized into the Davenport School System in 1891.

1886 was a watershed year for the Society. The agency was renamed and then joined with other community benevolent societies and agencies to form the Davenport Associated Charities. The Ladies Industrial Relief provided office space and administrative aid to this effort, aimed at avoiding the duplication of services and the sharing of information.

This same year, the Society purchased its first permanent home, a small building located on Sixth Street between Brady and Main Streets. Two years later, they began to raise funds to build a larger facility. A local architect, Mr. Edward S. Hammatt, donated his services for the building plan. The property cost $2,850.00, and they building $8,918.07. Funding was solicited from the private sector and the community responded generously. The Society raised more money than needed, but still refused to hold the official opening of the Industrial Home at 115 West Sixth Street, until all debts had been paid. On October 1, 1892, the President of the Ladies Industrial Relief Society, Miss Pheobe Sudlow, accepted the keys to the Industrial Home from the architect in a ceremony with admission by invitation only.

The large three story red brick building on Sixth Street became the center for social services in the community. When it opened, Miss Sophie Toller was named matron of the Home and she resided there permanently, providing crisis care twenty-four hours a day.

In 1892, the Day Nursery was opened, offering day services for women whose "need to work had been carefully investigated." The society "deeply deplored the necessity" for the nursery but still recognized the need. The same year that the nursery opened, the Society began an employment bureau for women, which operated until 1943. In 1892, the laundry also began operation. Women could use the washing machines for 10 cents a day, allowing them to earn income by taking in laundry. Messengers on bikes brought in and then later delivered the laundry. The Home provided childcare while the women used the facilities. During breaks, instruction in social skills and music and literature programs were offered.

In 1895, the Society initiated summer school, staffed by volunteers, many were teachers from the public school system. In 1912, the Society operated its own kindergarten for children in daycare and unable to attend their home school. In 1916, Davenport Schools allowed the children from the Home to attend Lincoln School. In their continuing efforts to help families learn methods and skills necessary for successful living, the Society began a loan fund for families, providing no interest loans. They also provided "Penny Banks" for the children, and considered teaching financial thrift to be part of their mission.

The society and its predecessors were astute in cultivating and maintaining ties and information exchanges with agencies like themselves across the nation. In the early 1900's they joined both the Family Service Association of America and the National Conference of Social Work. After the resignation of the Industrial Home's first matron in 1908, Mrs. A.E. Hammatt was named Executive Secretary of the Society. It was fitting that Mrs. Hammatt, a relation of the architect, was in charge in 1914 when a large addition was built, providing a nursery, playroom, and a dormitory for napping children. The Home never offered residential care. The only full time residents were the executive secretaries.

Miss Lillian Moore assumed the position of Executive Secretary in 1916 and Mrs. Mary R. Sopp in 1919. Miss Moore and Mrs. Dopp were credited with innovating programs such as the Juvenile Protective Department, which marked the beginning of casework service in our community, and identified foster care as a viable alternative for children whose own homes were unfit. The Society persuaded the court to pay for foster care in 1928, the same year that Miss Alice Whipple took over as Executive Secretary, and guided the agency through the demanding times of the Great Depression. Miss Whipple began a project in connection with the state to demonstrate the effectiveness of family casework in rehabilitation. The project became a nationwide model and became the sole responsibility of the state in 1944.

Miss Lillian E. O' Brien became Executive Secretary in 1938 and stayed at the helm until 1964. Members of the Society remember Miss O'Brien as a small dark haired woman with an enchanting Irish brogue. She was passionate about the lives of the families that the agency helped and involved the members of the Society in the activities of the children in the nurseries and day care programs. The War years of 1942 to 1945 were years of "great stress and strain". The agency felt that social problems were "intensified by fatherless homes and working mothers".

Securing the funding for such an agency as the Ladies Industrial Relief Society was a constant challenge. In 1895 the agency had wisely pledged to the community that all bequests would be invested and that subsequent interest they generated would be the only funds used to support the agency's programs. In 1895, $400 was bequeathed and invested by the Board of Trustees, a group of predominantly men from the community, charged with the financial well-being of the agency and operating independently from the members of the Society. The endowment had grown to $19,000 by 1912 and was almost $120,000 in 1949 on the 100th anniversary of the agency.

The 1895 Board of Trustees also began approaching a "certain group" of citizens for annual pledges for a five year maintenance fund. Named the Sustaining Fund, it gained sixty-four pledges for the first year, providing an annual income of $524. During the Great Depression the Sustaining Fund became a part of the Civic Planning Committee, a joint community funding effort which later became the Davenport Community Chest, parent of the United Way. When the Society merged the Sustaining Fund with the Community chest, they were assured that "the needs of the agency, in excess of endowment, would be met by the Community Chest as long as the community approved of the programs and efforts of the Ladies Industrial Relief Society".

After the turbulent war years, the community and the agency settled into the calm of the 1950's. The agency continued to redefine both the scope of its work and the people it served. Programs for children and family counseling efforts were expanded. The number of children in the day care nurseries was dwindling. The prosperity of the 1950's was changing the needs of the community.

It seems that the only turbulence experienced during this time was a fire caused by an overheated coffee pot left unattended overnight. The fire damaged the upper story and roof of the Industrial Home. The other significant event of the 1950's was the agency's re-naming. No one was quite sure what the Ladies Industrial Relief Society meant, and members felt the name did not reflect their work or define them in the community, but still they clung to the name. They had used it for seventy-two successful years. The minutes do not record debate, but in 1958 the Society became Family and Children's Services, a name which reflected the programs and mission of the agency.

As the 50's gave way to the upheaval of the 1960's, Miss Lillian O'Brien resigned as Executive Secretary, and Ms. Beverlee Tracy was chosen as Executive Director. Her title as Director, rather than Secretary, was emblematic of the changes ahead. 1965 marked a radical change in the tradition of the agency. Mrs. Tracy resigned and Kenneth C. Boyd was named to replace her. Boyd had joined the agency recently as a direct service social worker as one of four agency employees including the director and secretary. Before Tracy's resignation, the Board had appointed Rev. Glenn Warnecke to their own ranks. Rev. Warnecke was the first male to serve since the organization's inception in 1849. And now, also for the first time, a male was leading the agency, at a salary of $9,400 a year. Ken Boyd did not reside at the Industrial Home, which by 1965 was a large and outdated structure plagued by antiquated electrical and steam heating systems and lacking critical opportunities for air conditioning and access. Former Board members of the 1950's all remembered the long and arduous climb up the wooden stairs to the third floor where Board meeting were held.

In 1970, the Board of Directors of Family and Children's Services decided that the Industrial Home had to be demolished. The agency had begun to grow and efficiency office space was needed. The present building, where the Home Based Programs are housed, was built for around $50,000, and funded using the remains of the endowment fund established in 1895. In the years since 1949 the Board of Trustees for unknown reasons had allowed the fund to diminish. Not long after the payment of the new building, the Board of Trustees was abolished and the financial security of the agency was vested with the Board of Directors and the Executive Director.

By the time the agency had moved into its new quarters, the space it provided for twelve social workers was already overflowing. Within six months the agency rented additional office space in Bettendorf. "We recognized the relationship between good space and program development. Modern offices and buildings attract good employees, are noticed by funders and are appreciated by clients," states Ken Boyd in recounting facility planning and management during his tenure as Executive Director.

In 1968, the agency assumed the programs, staff and funding of Catholic Charities. The use of the Wittenmyer Home was acquired in 1974, becoming a private provider of residential treatment for youth. In a bold move to serve the entire community, the agency also began offering services across the Mississippi to residents of Illinois in 1982. In 1984, the agency again changed its name to Family Resources, Inc., to accurately reflect its work and mission.

In thirty years as the Executive Director, Kenneth C. Boyd successfully guided the agency from an old, out-dated building and two employees to nine bi-state office sites, residential programs and two shelters, staffed by approximately 350 employees. The sites of the agency now include two domestic violence shelters, the most recent established in Muscatine, Iowa, as well as an entire campus of residential treatment facilities. The agency both reflected the changes in the community and social services and constructed and implemented its own changes to better serve families. The funding of the agency moved to a fee for service model, with the state paying for services that it had been mandated to provide. Direct services were largely provided by paid staff, while volunteers served on the Board of Directors and on Advisory Boards and were involved in large fund raising efforts in the community. In 1978, a $2 million campaign to remodel and construct new facilities on the Wittenmyer Campus was accomplished by community volunteers who believed in the work of Family Resources.

Tom Wilson replaced Ken Boyd in 1995 as Executive Director of Family Resources, Inc. Mr. Wilson's vision for the agency included a restructuring of both the management of the agency, as well as the Board of Directors. The new formation offered the staff management team and the Board the opportunity to develop a strategic plan for the agency and to redefine the agency's mission. The Board of Directors charged the staff with spreading the word about the agency and its many available services, This marketing effort knocked on the door of an old taboo. The women who pioneered the agency's predecessors believed that they were "to avoid publicity in giving relief". they desired to protect the confidentiality of those served and to avoid bringing attention to themselves. It is hard to break old patterns, but both the Board and the staff of Family Resources intend to take the word and work of the agency out into the community. The agency desires to be a resource for all families, whatever their needs. In being such a resource, the agency also pledges itself to collaboration and cooperation with the myriad of public and private groups and agencies that serve families.