Anna Adams Gordon

Anna Adams Gordon
Anna Adams Gordon, circa 1910
Born	July 21, 1853 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	June 15, 1931 Castile, New York, U.S.
Resting place	Mount Hope Cemetery (Boston)
Education	Mount Holyoke College

Anna Adams Gordon (July 21, 1853 – June 15, 1931) was an American social reformer, songwriter, and, as national president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union when the Eighteenth Amendment was adopted, a major figure in the Temperance movement.

Gordon was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to James M. and Mary Clarkson Gordon, both Christian abolitionists. When she was three, her family moved to Auburndale. She went on to attend Boston High School, Lasall Seminary, and Mount Holyoke College. She spent a year abroad in San Sebastián with her sister, Alice Gordon Gulick, who had started a school for girls there in 1871.

In 1877, Gordon met Frances E. Willard at a Dwight L. Moody revival meeting, in the building where Willard was holding temperance meetings. Gordon's younger brother Arthur had died just days before, a traumatic event which had, as Willard later wrote, driven Gordon "Godward". The two became close friends, with Gordon continuing to play organ for Willard's meetings. Gordon eventually moved into Willard's residence as her personal secretary. Gordon subsequently followed her employer on her travels through the United States, Canada and Europe, spending a year in England, mostly as the guests of Lady Henry Somerset.

Gordon and Willard remained close friends until Willard's death in 1898, at which time Lillian M. N. Stevens became president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, with Gordon as vice-president. That same year, Gordon also wrote a memorial biography of Willard (expanded and reprinted in 1905). Upon Lillian Stevens' death in 1914, Anna Adams Gordon became president of the WCTU.