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Exhibition Join In: Voluntary Assocations in America

Join In: Voluntary Assocations in America

California Federation of Women’s Clubs

Cover of Club Life, March 1904. (An Official Organ of California Federation of Women’s Clubs and California International Sunshine Society). San Francisco, The Clubwomen’s Guild, 1902–1906. General Collections, Library of Congress (79.00.00)
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Portrait of Mrs. Lovell White, founder, vice-president, and de facto president of the California Federation of Women’s Clubs. Reproduction. General Collections, Library of Congress (080.00.00)
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California Federation of Women’s Clubs

Local women’s clubs, linked through state and national networks, galvanized middle- and upper-class women’s efforts to claim a place in civic life. The California Federation of Women’s Clubs (CFWC), founded in 1900, was one of many women’s associations throughout the country that fought to preserve places of outstanding natural beauty. Its publication Club Life documents its activities. In 1903, Laura Lyon White (1839–1916), know as Mrs. Lovell White, leader of the CFWC, organized a national petition that collected 1,400,000 signatures to preserve California’s Calaveras Grove, a stand of the largest redwoods in existence. President Theodore Roosevelt commended it to Congress in the first Presidential Special Message responding to an association of women.