The settlement movement began with the founding of Toynbee Hall, in East London in 1884. The Anglican clergyman Samuel Augustus Barnett and a group of Oxford men joined him and his wife in "settling" in a deprived area of the city. "In residing among the poor, they would become neighbors and friends, sharing the concerns of the district and the cultural advantages of their fortunate birth and education" (Carson, 1). The movement spread to the United States in 1886 when Charles B. Stover and Stanton Coit, "an American lecturer at the West London Ethical Society and early visitor to Toynbee Hall," established Neighborhood Guild, now the University Settlement, on the Lower East Side of New York City.
By 1890 settlement houses had been established in Boston, New York, and Chicago, by people working independently believing the same idea.…
