Eliza Sproat Turner was the founder and first president of the New Century Guild. Born in 1826 in Philadelphia, she was ahead of her time in many respects — a teacher and fierce advocate for public education, a prolific writer and a passionate crusader for social justice of all sorts.
Eliza’s causes ran the gamut, from the prevention of cruelty to animals to women’s rights to the abolitionist movement. She felt particularly compelled to take on “life and its problems” wherever she could; in the late 1870s, she took special interest in the issues faced by modern working women, who had little support in society at the time. Thus the New Century Guild was born, a source of camaraderie, respite, education and inspiration for working women and also a gathering space for some of the best-known feminists, abolitionists and suffragists of the time.
The Guild would be one of Eliza’s greatest passions until the day she died in 1903, and its headquarters — the “Home Beautiful” that today houses our own Guild House — remains one of Eliza’s many fascinating legacies.
