Jane Addams, the eighth of nine children, was born on September 6, 1860, in Cedarville, Illinois, into a wealthy family of Quaker background. Addams was a member of the first generation of American women to attend college. She graduated in 1881 from Rockford Female Seminary, in Illinois, which the following year became Rockford College for Women, allowing Addams to obtain her bachelor’s degree. In the 1880s Addams began studying medicine at the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia, but she had to suspend her studies because of poor health. Throughout the decade Addams also suffered from depression owing to her father’s sudden death in 1881. Her physical and mental conditions, however, did not prevent her from traveling extensively in Europe. During one of her voyages, Addams visited London’s original settlement house of Toynbee Hall, established in 1884, with her companion, Ellen Gates Starr. The visit led the two women to establish the Chicago settlement house of Hull House in 1889, the second such house to be established in America. (Dr. Stanton Coit and Charles B. Stover had founded the first American settlement house, the Neighborhood Guild of New York City, in 1886.) Through Hull House, Addams found a vocation for her adult life, overcoming the sense of uselessness that had besieged her for most of the 1880s.