Source: The Conversation – France
During the entire course of World War I, approximately 25,000 American women crossed the Atlantic Ocean to attend to the needs of wounded soldiers and civilian communities in Europe. Women traditionally operated in medical units and helped care for wounded soldiers.
Following US entry in the conflict, the newly established Women’s Overseas Hospitals and the American Women’s Hospitals in France drew hundreds of trained nurses to get involved in the war effort. Women’s participation, however, was not limited to the medical field.
Female physicians and stenographers brought valuable skills to the front and helped the US military in a variety of domains.
In 1918, for instance, the US Army Signal Corps sent 223 trained telephone operators to France to take over from inexperienced soldiers who were struggling to keep general headquarters connected with the troops who were under fire.
At a time when women experienced domestic confinement within their homes, taking part in relief organisations and being actively involved on the Western Front gradually reinforced their quest for equal rights, furthered their political agenda, and strengthened their claim for full citizenship.
Many American women seeking meaningful wartime jobs in France came from a very specific background, and many “hoped that the war would prove the forcing house in which long-standing feminine aspirations for the vote and economic equality would finally mature”.
Considerations for telling the story of the mothers to ‘America’s French orphans’ Any course focusing on American women in World War I should acknowledge the social backgrounds of the American wealthy expatriates, businessmen’s daughters, leisured wives of diplomats, and middle-class professionals who served as doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers, stenographers, and radio operators.
When teaching World War I in relation to 20th century American history to high school pupils and undergraduate students, educators traditionally focus on the neutrality of the United States and then expand on the reasons why Woodrow Wilson gradually dragged his country into the global conflict (Editorial note – For further reference: The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America by Michael S.
Neiberg, Oxford, 2016; Neutrals, Belligerents and the Transformation of the First World War by Abbenhuis Maartje and Ismee Tames, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).
Military historians linger on battles, strategies, and the decision-making process; cultural history gravitates around cultural encounters, war atrocities, and public reaction to the outbreak of the conflict; and scholars specialised in diplomacy dig into government archives, private papers, and conference proceedings to determine the responsibility of each country.
But historians of women, childhood, and philanthropy have much to add to the understanding of WWI. Presenting the big picture fatally necessitates omitting important details, but in the case of World War I studies, some entire facets of the conflict have been overlooked.
Out of interest in humanitarian organisations that operated in my home country, France, between 1914 and 1921, I have recently shifted the focus of my teaching to the plight of children during World War I. Cultural historians have long demonstrated that the French school system mobilised its youth to perpetuate a sense of national belonging in wartime and how state propaganda shaped children’s worldview.
Yet I find that the various pictures of the conflict remain ethnocentric and neglect the silent but vital action of American women in rescuing France’s children. Between 1914 and 1921, thousands of American women acted as mothers for French children displaced by the war.
In 1915, a group of American philanthropists envisioned the creation of Franco-American colonies to rescue youngest war victims from starvation and misery. Twenty-eight colonies were established by the Committee Franco-American for the Protection of the Children of the Frontier (CFAPCF) to shelter displaced orphans from France and Belgium.
All the colonies were managed and staffed by French nuns, but heavily depended on American donations and volunteers – American women. Among them were Alma A. Clarke, a former student at Bryn Mawr College, and Erica Thorp de Berry, the granddaughter of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a Harvard University professor and a towering figure in 19th century American literature.
American women helped to feed, educate, and nurse the orphaned and traumatised children who were moved to the colonies to recover and prepare for life on their own after the war. They tucked little orphans into bed, kissed them goodnight, told them stories of the gigantic country across the Atlantic Ocean, and even sang songs when they could not sleep.
Colonies operated as “humanitarian wombs” and though the survival of approximately 800 children from France and Belgium could look relatively insignificant, they carried out the first humanitarian actions toward children. That same year, in 1915, another humanitarian organisation reached out to thousands of Americans.
Envisioned by Paris-based French industrialist, Émile Deutsch de la Meurthe, the Fatherless Children of France Society (FCFS) encouraged Americans to “adopt” France’s children who had lost their fathers to the war. Although considered orphans by virtue of being fatherless, the children were not “adopted” but rather sponsored at the rate of $36.50 per year (what would be today $900/€773).
Though the tireless and skilled efforts of the FCFS staff and volunteers (mainly women), between 1915 and 1921, some 300,000 French children were spared hunger and destitution because they were sponsored by Americans. Both organisations drew Americans’ financial support and mobilised hundreds of women across the United States.
To engage donors and volunteers, they organised fairs on July 4 to remind Americans of Lafayette’s role in the American War of Independence, and spurred Americans to contribute to France’s survival. In the aftermath of the war, mourning families and those who had served were moved to support the cause of the FCFS.
The Fatherless Children of France Society more than doubled the number of sponsorships between November 1918 and January 1921, the date the organisation officially ceased to exist. American women’s roles in reforging post-WWI communities In the years after the war, individual Americans helped rebuild devastated France.
American women set up schools and reconstructed devastated villages. For example, the American Committee for Devastated France (ACDF), co-founded by Anne Morgan, the daughter of American financier J.P. Morgan, operated on several fronts. From the Château de Blérancourt, some 350 French-speaking American women joined her task force.
Among them were Mary Carson Breckinridge, the daughter of an Arkansas congressman and future founder of the Frontier Nursing Service; Lucile Atcherson Curtis, a militant suffragette who would later become the first female in the US Foreign Service; and Anna Lander West McDonnell, the niece of the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Washington.
Though the ACDF’s initial mission was to combat infant mortality, rebuild devastated villages, and finance the reconstruction of the industrial network, children’s well-being rapidly became a focus of the organisation. The ACDF established a network of public libraries for children in the former occupied zones of Northern France.
Jessie Carson became the director of a new American-style network of lending libraries for children. In April 1919, the first reading room for children was opened in the Northern French town of Vic-sur-Aisne. The ACDF inspired American women at Wellesley, Vassar, Smith, Radcliffe, Stanford and other American colleges and universities to tackle problems related to agricultural production and devastated villagers.
For example, in France’s remote and war-ravaged regions, a lack of milk contributed to infant mortality. Funds from humanitarian organisations brought cows to the devastated regions, where underfed mothers could not breastfeed their babies.
In early 1920, in Verdun (Meuse), the American-Franco Children’s League bought several cows, and Miss Butler, the president of the Vassar College unit of volunteers, organised the distribution of milk for babies; at the same time, in Reims (Marne), a “Drop of Milk Institution for Babies” opened, through the efforts of American women.
In short, when it came to humanitarian efforts to shield France’s children from destitution, hunger, and death, American women got the job done. And this is an untold story. American women’s experiences in humanitarian missions in France during WWI are important for many reasons.
First of all, they pave the way for future research on American humanitarian action during the Great War, and complement studies dealing with Franco-American relations.
Additionally, the archives of these associations are a treasure for those teaching history at the K-12, college, and graduate levels, as they contain letters from the women serving in France during and after the war.
These primary sources are important first-hand accounts of the conflict.
For example, in teaching my unit on American action in France during WWI, I invited my pupils to analyse several fragments of Anne Morgan’s letters to her mother, held at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.
Her letter, dated April 30, 1919 (Anne Tracy Morgan Papers,1888–1952, Morgan Library and Museum, New York), read as follows: “We had proudly repaired a room to be used for the school at Camelin, when the Mayor came in and told us that in the brook, just outside the door of the school house, the head of a Boche had appeared in the water, as the brook had washed away the covering of soil that was over the body.” With all the archives available online and the different tools to communicate, schools and universities in France and in the United States could easily partner with each other on digital projects, along with local repository, library, museum, or university collection.
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Emmanuel Destenay ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/05/27/who-were-the-american-mothers-to-frances-orphaned-children-during-the-first-world-war/