February 21, 2025
Frances Sheldon Bolton
(1863 - 1936)

This week's Musings from Main is inspired by the recent donation of a picture from 1940. The image is of a Mothers Club children's party at the Community House which is located at the former five corners area of Wapping. The Community House is the little brick building at the corner of what is now Sullivan Avenue and Ellington Road in South Windsor.

This picture was donated by Beverly Robidoux Titus, pictured on the left with a bow in her hair. As I was looking into where to file it, I stumbled upon the Connecticut Congress of Mothers and learned of its Founder, Frances Sheldon Bolton.

National Congress of Mothers

Jennifer Govan writes that The National Congress of Parents and Teachers was originally founded as the National Congress of Mothers on February 17th, 1897, by schoolteacher Alice McLellan Birney and philanthropic suffragist Phoebe Apperson Hearst.  The organization began as a way to address concerns around the educational, social, and economic well-being of children, and grew to include fathers, teachers, students, and other citizens, as it established branches in all states and the District of Columbia.

Frances Sheldon Bolton was Connecticut's sole representative at this first national meeting in 1897 and was appointed "organizer" for the Connecticut Congress of Mothers by Alice McClellan Birney, first national President. In recounting its early history, the Connecticut Parent-Teacher Association (CT PTA) website notes that for three years Frances attended the National Conventions, each year being urged by Alice to found a Connecticut Branch. Finally, "in 1900, she consented to put the matter to a test."

Frances Sheldon Bolton
(1863 - 1936)

"Frances Sheldon Bolton was born in New Haven, Conn., on September 22, 1863, the daughter of Judge Joseph Sheldon and Abigail Burrill Barker... From her parents Mrs. Bolton inherited a high idealism, a firm conviction of the necessity of social justice, and a wide sympathy for the unfortunate."(CT-PTA history)

At the age of twenty, Frances married James Bolton and together they had four children, two sons and two daughters. In speaking of these early years, her daughters write, "To care for her first baby in the finest way possible, Mrs. Bolton sought books on bringing up children. Finding none, she determined to write them herself."(CT-PTA history)

By the time she was thirty years old, Frances was editing a monthly magazine, The Mothers Journal and in 1898,  she published one of the first books on child care, entitled: BABY. 

All of this experience, along with a background in nursing, made Frances an ideal choice to found the Connecticut branch of National Congress of Mothers.

Connecticut Congress of Mothers

In 1900, Frances started out by writing three hundred and fifty letters by hand, and mailing them to anyone who she she hoped would be interested. She mailed the letters to people from all over Connecticut including, ministers and their wives, teachers, and members of Boards of Education.  She later said of that first memorable gathering:

"It was the fashion in those days to serve elaborate refreshments at every kind of gathering, and my one fear was that I might not have enough to eat. So, assuming that I might reasonably expect two-thirds of my invited guests to accept, I prepared for two hundred and fifty people. Such mountains of food we prepared! Two wash boilers full of sandwiches, salad in every bowl and receptacle in the house, half a dozen kinds of cakes, gallons of ice cream, and more gallons of coffee. Finally, it was all ready and - ten people came." The Bolton families have always declared they lived on sandwiches until spring."

Although not many attended that first meeting, the idea soon took off and there were local Mothers Clubs scattered all across Connecticut, including in South Windsor.

Mothers Clubs in South Windsor

By looking through the books of minutes of the South Windsor Mothers Club, it appears that the organization was founded in 1910, although the records for the first three years have been lost. According to Michael Salvatore writing for the Journal Inquirer, "meetings were generally held in various members homes or at town hall (then on main street) during the school year." 

The meetings would include speakers lecturing on the topics of children or schools, and were usually followed by some type of social activity, perhaps with music or a performance by school children.  The above minutes from the 1913 June meeting note it consisted of a "silver tea" and that a report of the National Congress of the Mothers Club was read.

Over the years, the Mothers Clubs in town raised money to benefit the various schools and advocated for the students. They helped purchase playground equipment and pushed for improvements in schools, such as addressing the issue of a deficient water supply to the girls bathroom at Union School

It is due to the tenacity, devotion and vision of Frances Sheldon Bolton that innumerable Connecticut children over the last century have been aided, encouraged and thrived.

Black and white image of women and children, some holding dolls, on a parade float for the Wapping Mothers Club in the 1949 Wapping Fair parade. .

In 1907, Frances Sheldon Bolton was made Honorary President of the State Organization and convention resolutions were passed "in hearty and loving appreciation of the earnest, unselfish and devoted labors of its first and beloved president." (CT-PTA history)

Resources used for this Musing from Main are listed below.

• Govan, Jennifer. Today In History: The National Congress of Parents and Teachers Is Founded, Teachers College, Columbia University website, Monday, Feb 17, 2025 .Accessed 7 Mar. 2025.
• Connecticut Parent Teacher Association website Accessed 7 Mar. 2025.
• Salvatore, Michael J., Before the PTA, there was the 'Mothers Club', Journal Inquirer Lifestyles section, original publication date unknown, Accessed 7 Mar. 2025.

• Schoff, Frederic. “The National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Associations.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 67, 1916, pp. 139–47. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1013499. Accessed 7 Mar. 2025.

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