Fanny Weston Bixby Spencer (November 6, 1879 - April 30, 1930), also referred to as Fanny Bixby was an American philanthropist and

antiwar An anti-war movement (also ''antiwar'') is a social movement, usually in opposition to a particular nation's decision to start or carry on an armed conflict, unconditional of a maybe-existing just cause. The term anti-war can also refer to ...

writer. She joined the fledgling Long Beach police force in January 1908, making her one of the country's earliest

policewomen The integration of women into law enforcement positions can be considered a large social change. A century ago, there were few jobs open to women in law enforcement. A small number of women worked as correctional officers, and their assignment ...

Family and education

She was born Fanny Weston Bixby in Los Angeles, California, the youngest of nine surviving children of Jotham Bixby and Margaret Hathaway Bixby. Jotham had arrived in California in 1852 from

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north ...

, where he and several cousins had formed Flint, Bixby & Company, which acquired major landholdings, including the 27,000-acre Rancho Los Cerritos in what is now Long Beach. Fanny grew up wealthy, and although she was an active philanthropist, when she died in 1930 her $2.5 million estate was the largest ever probated in Orange County up to that point. Fanny grew up on Rancho Los Cerritos, of which Jotham was the manager. Later, Fanny's grandfather, the prominent abolitionist and Unitarian minister George Whitefield Hathaway, came to live with the family. Fanny Bixby wrote about his abolitionist activities, including turning his house into a station on the

Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and Canada. T ...

, in her pamphlet entitled ''How I Became a Socialist''. Fanny Bixby was educated at the Marlborough School in Los Angeles and the Pomona Preparatory School. She attended

Wellesley College Wellesley College is a private women's liberal arts college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1870 by Henry and Pauline Durant as a female seminary, it is a member of the original Seven Sisters Colleges, an unofficial g ...

for three years but left without a degree. At Wellesley, she studied sociology with

Emily Greene Balch Emily Greene Balch (January 8, 1867 – January 9, 1961) was an American economist, sociologist and pacifist. Balch combined an academic career at Wellesley College with a long-standing interest in social issues such as poverty, child labor ...

, who would go on to win the 1946

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...

Philanthropy and police work

While still at Wellesley College, she worked for a time at the Denison

Settlement House The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in United Kingdom and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and s ...

in Boston (founded by Balch) and the Nurse's Settlement House in San Francisco. On leaving college, she moved back to Long Beach, where she founded the Newsboy Club in the basement of a building her father owned so that the paper delivery boys would have somewhere to go that was off the streets. She also taught some of the newsboys to read. She donated money to various civic causes, including Long Beach's first hospital (Seaside Hospital), and the Walt Whitman School (private) and her settlement house, both in the

Boyle Heights Boyle is an English, Irish and Scottish surname of Gaelic, Anglo-Saxon or Norman origin. In the northwest of Ireland it is one of the most common family names. Notable people with the surname include: Disambiguation *Adam Boyle (disambiguation), ...

district on the east-side of Los Angeles. She and her husband often invited ghetto youth of working mothers to stay on their farm in Orange County to divert them from gangs and delinquency. In 1907 she founded what is now

Long Beach Memorial Medical Center MemorialCare Long Beach Medical Center (LBMC), formerly known as Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, is a hospital in Long Beach, California. It is the flagship hospital of the MemorialCare Health System. The hospital is accredited by the Joint C ...

. She also help found the town of

Costa Mesa, California Costa Mesa (; Spanish for "Table Coast") is a city in Orange County, California. Since its incorporation in 1953, the city has grown from a semi-rural farming community of 16,840 to an urban area including part of the South Coast Plaza–John Wa ...

. When Long Beach formed its police force in 1908, Captain Tom Williams brought Fanny Bixby onto the force because of her extensive philanthropic work in the city. She was sworn in as a special police matron on January 1, 1908, making her one of the first women police officers in the country. The ''Los Angeles Herald'' reported of her appointment that California was "now demonstrating that when necessary a woman can become a policeman, or should we say policewoman?" Fanny Bixby had charge of all cases involving women and children and was authorized to make arrests. She refused any pay, and thus did not become the country's first paid policewoman — that honor would go to

Alice Stebbins Wells Alice Stebbins Wells (June 13, 1873 – August 17, 1957) was one of the first American-born female police officers in the United States, hired in 1910 in Los Angeles. Career Early career Alice was a graduate of Oberlin College and Hartford T ...

two years later. Fanny Bixby worked with the Long Beach police force for four years.

Antiwar activities

An admirer of

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

, Fanny Bixby was a

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

and a

pacifist Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...

. She published some poetry in the California Socialist Party's newspaper, the ''Oakland World'', and she attended at least one antiwar meeting in Pasadena before the

Espionage Act of 1917 The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law enacted on June 15, 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code (War ...

made it risky to speak out against the government. After the war, she published her views in a number of antiwar pamphlets. She was strongly against militaristic symbolism, such as standing for the

Pledge of Allegiance The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States is a patriotic recited verse that promises allegiance to the flag of the United States and the republic of the United States of America. The first version, with a text different from the one used ...

, forcing children to sing the national anthem in schools, and saluting the flag. Her 1920 play ''The Jazz of Patriotism'' was about a woman who is ostracized for refusing to salute the flag. It premiered at the Egan Theater (later the Musart Theater) in downtown Los Angeles.

Publications

* ''The Revolution Non-resistant'' (1919) * ''The Jazz of Patriotism (an Anti-War Play)'' (1920) * ''The Repudiation of War'' (1922) * ''Militarism in America'' (1926) * ''How I Became a Socialist' (n.d., published as Fanny Bixby) * ''Tolstoy and the Tolstoyan Life'' (n.d.)

Personal life

Fanny Bixby met her future husband, W. Carl Spencer, at a Socialist Party meeting in 1917. They moved to

Costa Mesa Costa may refer to: Biology * Rib (Latin: ''costa''), in vertebrate anatomy * Costa (botany), the central strand of a plant leaf or thallus * Costa (coral), a stony rib, part of the skeleton of a coral * Costa (entomology), the leading edge of th ...

(then named Harper) in 1919, where they raised five adopted children and supported many others. Formerly a dockworker, Carl became a developer, and Fanny continued her philanthropy to such effect that in the decade they lived there, the town grew from 250 to 3,000 residents. The couple donated land to the city for a park and a library. Fanny Bixby Spencer died of cancer at the age of 51. A couple of years before she died, she wrote to her cousin

Sarah Bixby Smith Sarah Bixby Smith (1871–1935) was a California writer and an advocate of women's education. ''Adobe Days'', her memoir of growing up in southern California, is considered a classic of the genre. Family and education Sarah Hathaway Bixby was bor ...

: "I have three lines of work, bringing up my foster children, helping my neighbors (mostly Japanese farmers) and banging my head against the stone wall of militarism and conservatism that hems me in." Her papers are housed at the Rancho Los Cerritos Museum.

References