Jane Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois, on September 6, 1860.
Jane Addams was born on September 6, 1860, in the small town of Cedarville, Illinois, the eighth of nine children born to John Huy Addams, a prosperous miller and state senator, and Sarah Weber Addams. Her mother died when Jane was just two years old, and she was raised largely under the influence of her father, a Quaker-influenced Republican and friend of Abraham Lincoln, whose ethical seriousness profoundly shaped her worldview.
Addams suffered from a congenital spinal condition (Pott's disease) that left her with a slight curvature of the spine and periods of ill health throughout her childhood, but she was an avid reader and was encouraged toward higher education at a time when few women pursued it.
Her birth in this rural Illinois community set the stage for a life that would later transform urban American reform. Her early exposure to her father's civic engagement and moral seriousness would echo throughout her later work in founding Hull-House and championing social justice causes. The circumstances of her birth—into a family of relative means and political connection—afforded her the education and social standing that made her subsequent unconventional career as a reformer possible in an era when women's public roles were highly circumscribed.