Anita McCormick Blaine

Anita Eugenie McCormick Blaine (1866-1954) was an American philanthropist and political activist. An heir to the McCormick Reaping Machine Works fortune built by her father, Cyrus McCormick (1809-1884), Blaine was influential in subsidizing the launch of a number of progressive political causes, including Chicago's Francis W. Parker Elementary School, the New World Foundation, the Progressive Party (1948), and the radical New York newspaper, the National Guardian.

Anita Eugenie McCormick was born July 4, 1866, the third of five children born to reaping machine inventor and industrialist Cyrus McCormick and his wife, the former Nancy Maria "Nettie" Fowler.

Working upon lessons learned from failed efforts by his father, the Virginia-born Cyrus McCormick had worked to construct a mechanical grain-harvesting device from an early age, fabricating his first crude machine in 1831, when he was just 22 years old. After putting down the project for a time, McCormick returned to refine his mechanical reaper in 1842, beginning to sell the first few commercial machines in that year. McCormick moved his operation to Chicago in 1848 and within five years was well on his way to becoming a prosperous industrialist. By the time of Anita's birth, the family fortune exceeded $4 million.

Anita was born in the East but the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 pulled the McCormicks back to Chicago to help rebuild the family franchise. Her early education was by means of private tutors. From her early teenage years, McCormick was educated at Misses Grant's Seminary, a conservative Presbyterian religious institution financially supported by McCormick and his fortune, and at the Misses Kirkland's Academy, a private school.

Spending much of her time in New York and Europe, Anita McCormick returned to Chicago in October 1887, in the wake of the Haymarket Affair and the growth of Hull House and the municipal reform movement. She became involved in the work of the Howe Street Mission, a philanthropic institution in which young and poorly educated working class women could gather in the evenings to learn sewing, cooking, and other skills and attend informational lectures.

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