Lucy's Girls: Lucy Orme Morgan and the Girl's Industrial Home

Join the McLean County Museum of History’s Director of Education Candace Summers for a program on the Lucy Orme Morgan Home for girls.

Lucy Orme Morgan was a woman who was passionate about social welfare and was active in numerous philanthropic activities throughout her lifetime. However, her passion (and what would become the most distinguishable effort in her life) was the Girl's Industrial Home.

Founded in 1889, the Girl's Industrial Home was a place for dependent children who were neglected or had no one to care for them. It was an institution where girls would be taught useful things to prepare them for a life of independence when they were of age. To Lucy, it was her "hobby" to make it "a home and keep it as far as possible from being an institution." For more than 30 years, the Home flourished under her watchful eye. And because of her service to that institution, the board of the Home honored that service by renaming it as "The Lucy Orme Morgan Home" in 1929.