Alice Putnam
educator who opened the first private kindergarten in Chicago in 1874
Alice H. Putnam (1841 – January 19, 1919) was an educator who opened the first private kindergarten in Chicago in 1874, and was described as "the pioneer of the Kindergarten" in that city.
Life
Putnam "became interested in the kindergarten when her children were young". She therefore "found ways of combining her own mothering with working to help others to become better mothers". "Realizing that she needed kindergarten training, Putnam took her oldest daughter with her to Columbus, Ohio, where she studied in a training school run by Anna J. Ogden".
She left her home to study the new method of education, and came back filled with the principles and philosophy of Froebel. How well she did her work, hundreds can testify who sat in her classes and took her training in the Chicago Froebel Kindergarten Training School. These pupils are scattered all over the world wherever the education of little children is going forward, and there you will find the spirit and teaching of Alice H. Putnam.
In 1879, Putnam was joined in Chicago by Elizabeth Harrison, who became Putnam's assistant for a year before continuing with her own studies elsewhere. In 1880 Putnam took over a Chicago training class that had been started by Anna J. Ogden, which then became the Chicago Froebel Association, directed by Putnam until 1910. Putnam was a member of the International Kindergarten Union from its organization, in 1883, until her death, serving on its most important committees, and twice as its president.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Alice Putnam” as educator who opened the first private kindergarten in Chicago in 1874. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q27918079. VIAF identifies the subject as 41579780. The Library of Congress control number is no2005092641. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1841, 1919, 1874 and 1879.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alice Putnam” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.