Anna never worked outside the home, and she was cared for financially by her father, and then by her brothers. She took painting classes. She wrote two books, mostly for the benefit of her small circle of friends. But by November 1894, all of Anna’s family was dead. Because none of her siblings had living spouses or children, that meant that Anna inherited all of her family’s wealth.[10]
At the age of seventy-two, she was in possession of a vast personal fortune—$5 million, which is around $178 million in modern money.
What would an ordinary woman who came into sudden wealth do with her money in 1894? Take trips to the seaside? Buy a house in Newport? Purchase all the gems and baubles that caught her eye? Bedeck herself in ostrich plume hats? Dine at the finest restaurants? Join the upper crust of Gilded Age society?
Anna was no ordinary woman, and that’s exactly what she didn’t do.
No, she didn’t travel. In fact, she seems to have never ventured further than Seneca Falls, New York. Did she attend the Seneca Women’s Convention there? Signs point to yes.
No, she didn’t buy fancy headwear and custom-made clothes. Even in Anna’s old age, her letters indicate disapproval of other Quaker Friends who pretended to live simple lives but who were secretly getting their pictures taken and wearing silk.
No, Anna did not spend the money on herself. Instead, she realized that her time was short, and the world was in need of much good.
Perhaps Anna was inspired by the Quaker preacher Edward Burrough, who wrote in 1659, “We are not for Names, nor Men, nor Titles of Government, nor are we for this Party, nor against the other, because of its Name and Pretence; but we are for Justice and Mercy, and Truth and Peace, and true Freedom, that these may be exalted in our Nation.”[11]
How closely these sentiments would be echoed by Gouverneur Morris when he wrote the Preamble to the Constitution more than one hundred years later. And more than two hundred years later, Miss Anna T. Jeanes asked herself what she could do to bring more justice, more mercy, more truth, more peace, and more freedom to the world. Instead of spending $5 million on fancy furnishings and luxury cruises, she decided to give it all away.
So Anna began making bequests. A few causes had always been important to the Jeanes family. Anna’s sister Mary, for instance, was the founder of a home for African American children who had nowhere to go—kind of like an emergency shelter.
In the annual reports, managers of the Home for Destitute Colored Children describe the circumstances under which children came into their care, including a mother who had been abandoned by her husband. The mother was hospitalized and could no longer care for her daughter. Another report described a boy found sleeping in a railway station, begging for food.[12]
The Jeanes Six, as I call the six siblings who lived to adulthood—Jacob, Joshua, Samuel, Joseph, Mary, and Anna—stayed out of the spotlight intentionally. Occasionally, you see one of their names printed in a small blurb in a Philadelphia newspaper as having been to this annual meeting or contributing to that cause.
For example, a notice in The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1883 shows Mary and Samuel Jeanes as having contributed to a children’s sanitarium.[13] Another article shows that both Samuel and Joseph sent money to a fund to help flood victims out west.[14]
The Jeanes Six cared about the human condition, not about naming rights. The Jeaneses were founding sponsors of the first women’s medical college of Pennsylvania, their names and contributions printed in the annual reports for transparency and bookkeeping purposes. But they didn’t want their picture taken at a ribbon cutting or to be interviewed by the newspaper. (And if you’re from Philly, maybe you know there actually is a Jeanes Campus at Temple University Hospital. It is named after the Jeanes Six, most especially Anna, but not at her request.)
Anna cared about women’s equality, but she was not one to make public speeches advocating for it. Anna is described by others as being a near recluse. Peculiar, with few close friends. She even seemed cranky at times. A story that appeared in newspapers in 1901 recounts how the people who lived in the row house next door to her played the piano far, far too much for Anna’s taste, and she asked them multiple times to Please, for the love of sweet baby Jesus, stop playing the piano so much. When they refused to acquiesce, Anna just bought the house. Here’s how one newspaper account described it:
Anna T. Jeanes, a Philadelphia spinster, who has money enough to be independent, was annoyed by a young woman who lived next door and played the piano with a persistence worthy of a better cause. Miss Jeanes did not go to the neighbors and tell them that she wished the girl would get married or paralyzed or something, and she didn’t write anonymous letters. She stood the playing as long as she could: then she paid $60,000 for the house in which the girl lived, making it necessary for the latter and her parents to move.[15]
Note that $60,000 at that time is about $2.2 million today. Whether Anna paid the family a premium to vacate the premises and enjoy the peace and quiet, I know not.
Anna wanted to make a large bequest to Swarthmore College, which was controlled by the Quaker Society of Friends. But she would only give the gift on one condition: that they agreed to abandon college athletics altogether, and most especially football. Anna considered football a waste of time and a distraction from what really mattered.
Swarthmore pondered her offer for a long time and decided, ultimately, to reject Anna’s money and keep athletics.[16]
The Jeaneses tried to follow the edict found in Matthew 6:3, which can be summarized as, “Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” Keep your good works a secret, and don’t publicly claim credit for them. God’s rewards came, the Jeaneses believed, when their work was shielded from public view.
And now, friend, it’s time now for me to tell you how I met Anna. When Anna came into her vast personal fortune, she, of course, had many people vying for her funds. She refused to take meetings with most of the people who courted her, but there was one meeting she did take—with William James Edwards.
Fifteen
William James EdwardsAlabama, 1869
William Edwards was born at the close of the Civil War in Snow Hill, Alabama, to a family that was soon to be emancipated from enslavement. His birth name was Ulysses Grant Edwards, but after his mother died when he was one year old, his grandmother changed his name to William. He adopted his grandfather’s name, James, as a middle name later.[1]
When William was a small boy, he became deathly ill with a painful condition that caused portions of his bones to die. He could barely walk, and for a time, his main method of locomotion was crawling around the yard. Because of his illness, he couldn’t live with his father, and his grandmother had since passed away as well. He was forced to stay with his aunt Rina, who could barely feed her own children, let alone him. The only full meals he ate were when his aunt and cousin gave up their food so he could have more.
Because his family had to work to subsist, William was left home alone for many hours a day, which he spent teaching himself arithmetic and reading one of the few books they had. His medical condition did not improve after several months of his aunt’s care, and Rina, now desperate, went door to door, begging for nickels, impressing upon her neighbors how dire William’s health was and how badly he needed a doctor.
One Sunday, a large group of people stopped by their tiny home after church. William was sitting on the ground outside, watching baby chicks play, and overheard the adults inside. “You should send him to the poorhouse,” one person said.
“You’ve done too much for him already,” said another.
“Drive him away and let him go wherever he can find shelter.”[2]
The implication was clear to William: His life was not worth saving, and everyone would be better off if he were dead. Distraught, he hobbled beneath a pine tree, and for more than an hour, begged God to let him die. When the prayer was done, he laid down, folded his arms, and waited for the prayer to work. For his life on earth to end.
But no such answer came. Instead, William felt better than he had in months, and his aunt Rina was even more determined than ever to get him well. The following year, she rented a small patch of land and planted seeds, tending to her garden and selling her harvest. At the end of the summer, she had managed to scrape together five dollars to take William to see a better doctor than the one that was available nearby.
Dr. George Keyser gave William medicine, and every time he needed to see the physician again, William would bring any money his aunt had. Sometimes it was none. As William rode a neighbor’s mule the ten miles to see the doctor, he would pray that a way would be made, and that the doctor would find it in his heart to give him his medicine even if he could not pay.
Eventually, Dr. Keyser told him, “You must continue to come and get treatment, even if you don’t have the funds.”[3] When William was well enough for surgery, Dr. Keyser told Aunt Rina that she needed to get him a place to stay that was closer to his office, so that he could be checked on every day. Rina found another woman who had previously been enslaved at the same plantation and who agreed to let William live with her while he received medical care.
Dr. Keyser’s notes read:
WJ Edwards was sent to me by his aunt, Rina Rivers, for medical treatment. He had been sick for several months from scrofula, and it had infected the bone of his left arm near the elbow joint, and the heel bone of his left foot. It was with much difficulty and pain that he walked at all.
I had to remove the dead bone (necrosed bone) from his arm and heel many times. He always stood the operation patiently and manifested so great a desire to get well, I kept him near me a long time and patiently watched his case.
After four years of treatment, his heel cured up nicely, and he was enabled to walk very well, and the following fall, he picked cotton. With prudence, care, and close application to cotton picking, he saved money enough to very nearly pay his medical account, and his fare to Booker T. Washington’s School at Tuskegee, Alabama.[4]
William Edwards grew to be a fine-looking man, with smooth skin and a thick mustache. He did in fact attend the Tuskegee Institute, becoming a teacher and starting his own school near where he had grown up in Snow Hill, Alabama. When school wasn’t in session, Booker T. Washington recruited him to take trips up north spreading the word about Tuskegee.
On one such trip—he remembers it as being in 1902, but it was probably more like 1900—Edwards received a letter introducing him to Anna Jeanes. The letter was from Henry C. Davis, a trustee of Tuskegee and friend of Booker T. Washington. Henry C. Davis was Lucretia Mott’s grandson, and this is another piece of evidence showing that it’s quite likely that Lucretia Mott and Anna Jeanes knew each other.
According to Edwards, Henry Davis basically said, “Hey, you should meet Anna Jeanes,” and Edwards took him up on his suggestion.
