Elizabeth Edson

Elizabeth Edson was born on June 23, 1826, in Lowell, Massachusetts, where she would live her entire life. Her father, Rev. Theodore Edson, was the long-serving rector at St. Anne’s Church and a strong influence on her life and beliefs. Edson grew up as part of the St. Anne’s community and, as an adult, taught Sunday School. It was around this Sunday School class that she grew the first American branch of the Girls’ Friendly Society.

In 1875, Edson read an article in a periodical, the "London Monthly Packet", describing the Girls’ Friendly Society in England. The Central Council of the Girls’ Friendly Society of America wrote in 1909, that the “power of self-protection is the need of all girls, regardless of their position in the social fabric, but especially of wage-earners” and Edson saw the Girls’ Friendly Society as a way in which to support them. In 1877, Edson established a parish group of the GFS at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Lowell, Massachusetts. The girls, primarily Sunday School students but also including some non-parish members from around Lowell, met in the Rectory parlor.

Although other parish branches of the Girl’s Friendly Society were beginning to form at roughly the same time, Edson appreciated the need for a central organization as well as the complications of beginning with decentralized, local societies. She wrote to the president of the English organization, Mrs. Townsend, in 1879, saying, “We grew from a slip...not from a root.” Nevertheless, through extensive correspondence with the leaders of the other parish groups, Edson cultivated a consensus on the direction first for diocesan organizations and then for a national organization. When the Girl’s Friendly Society of America was finally created in 1886, she was elected president. She served until her retirement in 1894.

Elizabeth Edson died in November, 1908.