Hannah Kent Schoff

• Hannah Schoff
• Born: June 3, 1853
• Died: December 10, 1940

Juvenile court reformer and child welfare worker, was born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, the eldest of five children of Thomas Kent, a woolen manufacturer, and Fanny (Leonard) Kent. Her ancestors were English. Her father was born in Lancashire, England, and emigrated as a youth to the United States. Her mother was a native of Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Her maternal ancestor, Soloman Leonard, was one of the original proprietors of that town. Hannah Kent was raised in Upper Darby and later Clifton Heights, Massachusetts. First educated by private tutors, she was eventually sent to the Longstreth School in Philadelphia and the Waltham Church School in Massachusetts.

Hannah Kent was married to Frederic Schoff, an engineer, on October 23, 1873. Settling first in Newtonville, Massachusetts, they moved to Philadelphia after a few years. The couple had seven children, four boys and three girls, born between 1874 and 1894. In Philadelphia Schoff joined the New Century Club, a women’s organization, and in 1897 was its delegate to the first National Congress of Mothers in Washington, D.C. She quickly became an important member of this movement, which was concerned with child welfare and education, serving as program chairman and then vice president from 1898 to 1902. Her husband was on the group’s advisory board, and he fully supported her reform activities. She founded the Pennsylvania State branch of the Congress of Mothers in 1899, and was its president until 1902 when she assumed the presidency of the National Congress. A supurb administrator, Schoff started an endowment fund, established a national headquarters in Washington, D.C, and from 1906 to 1920 was editor of the congress’s journalistic organ, The Child Welfare. Her work established a firm financial basis for the organization, and under her leadership the National Congress grew to thirty-seven state branches with a membership of over 190,000. Within the congress she worked for the creation of parent-teacher groups in schools. Her success was demonstrated when the group took the new name of National Congress of Mothers and Parent Teacher Association (later the National Congress of Parents and Teachers).

Hannah Schoff used her association to support various welfare reforms popular in the progressive era, including national and state child labor legislation, federally financed support for early childhood education, and standardized marriage and divorce laws. She was the chief organizer of the International Conference on Child Welfare held in Washington, D.C. in 1908, and in 1910 she was chosen a delegate by the U.S. State Department to the Third International Congress for Home Education in Brussels. From 1913 to 1919 she was a consultant to the Home Education Division of the U.S. Bureau of Education.

Schoffs second major interest was juvenile court and probation reform. She became interested in this area in 1899 when she helped to rehabilitate an eight-year-old Philadelphia girl who had been imprisoned for arson. A study revealing that more than 500 children were detained in prisons in Philadelphia alongside hardened adult prisoners convinced her of the need for new legislation. She headed a committee in 1900 that drew up a list of American state laws on deliquency and dependent children. Additionally, she visited various states to examine treatment of juvenile offenders, and in conjunction with expert legal advice she drafted several bills for the establishment of a separate and distinct juvenile court system. After extensive lobbying her acts were passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in 1901. Wishing to see this legislation succeed, she took an active part in the Philadelphia juvenile court system, the second in the nation. She attended almost all of its sessions for its first eight years of operation, chaired the committee that chose Philadelphia’s first probation officers, and served as president of the Philadelphia Juvenile Court and Probation Association from 1901 to 1923. As her work in this field became known, she became a consultant for the establishment of similar systems in Idaho, Louisiana, and Connecticut. Hannah Schoff was the first woman to be asked to address the Canadian Parliament, and assisted in establishing Canada’s juvenile court system. In 1909 she was chosen head of the American Committee on the Causes of Crime in Normal Children. The findings of her committee, published in The Wayward Child in 1915, stressed the need for reform in the legal treatment of children. She also wrote Wisdom of the Ages in Bringing Up Children (1933) and numerous articles for magazines and journals.

In addition to her other work, she was the director of the National Kindergarten Association, a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and founder of the Philadelphia Alliance for the Care of Babies in 1913. She died at the age of eighty-seven of a cerebral hemorrhage in Philadelphia. Her body was cremated, and her ashes buried in the Schoff plot in Newton Cemetery, Newton Center, Massachusetts.

Hannah Schoffs writings include: Parents’ Cooperation in Promotion of Child Hygine (1912), “Education for Child Nurture and Home Making Outside the Schools,” United States Bureau of Education, Report (1914), and “Education in the Home,” Ibid. (1916).

There is no full-length biography. Her life must be pieced together from scattered sources. The best accounts are H. C. Bennett, American Women in Civic Work (1915) and Notable America Women 1607-1950: A Biographical Dictionary (1971). See also National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, XVIII; Who Was Who in America, vol. I. (1942); and Woman’s Who’s Who of America, 1914-1915. Obituaries appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Record, and The New York Times, on December 12, 1940.