Background
Agnes Gertrude Regan was born on March 26, 1869 in San Francisco, California. She was the third daughter and fourth child in a family of nine; two of her sisters became nuns. Her father, of Irish and English parentage, was born in Valparaiso, Chile, but in 1849 migrated to San Francisco, at which time he changed his name from Santiago del Carmen O'Regan to James Regan. After working briefly in the gold fields, he served for ten years as private secretary to Joseph S. Alemany, the first Catholic archbishop of San Francisco. He then became associated with a brother-in-law, Richard Tobin, in the law firm of Tobin & Tobin and in the Hibernian Bank, of which he was a director. In 1863 he married Mary Ann Morrison, whose family had emigrated in 1847 from Ireland. Agnes Regan was reared in a large home in a section of San Francisco later known as the Western Addition.
Education
She was educated at St. Rose Academy and at the San Francisco Normal School. She graduated in 1887.
Career
She began an active career in the San Francisco public school system, serving successively as elementary teacher (1887 - 1900) and principal (1900 - 14), and then as a member of the board of education (1914 - 19).
Miss Regan had long been interested in social reform - she served on the city playground commission (1912 - 19) and helped secure California's first teachers' pension act - and in 1920 she accepted appointment as the representative of the San Francisco diocese to the organizational meeting of the National Council of Catholic Women in Washington, D. C.
There she was elected second vice-president and a member of the board of directors. When a few months later she was appointed executive secretary, she moved to Washington. A successor to the women's committee of the National Catholic War Council, the National Council of Catholic Women was conceived as a federation of women's organizations, national, diocesan, and local, and reflected the deepening involvement of the American Catholic hierarchy in matters of social welfare.
Operating as a central coordinating agency, it disseminated information about impending social legislation, stimulated and supported research on social problems, directed the deployment of Catholic social agencies, and won for Catholic women representation on committees and governmental agencies dealing with social issues of interest to them.
Meeting with groups around the country, Agnes Regan helped organize community centers, training programs for immigrants, and welfare services. She encouraged women to support child labor laws and the proposed Sheppard-Towner Act (passed in 1921), which provided maternity aid to indigent mothers. Miss Regan also played an important part in social work education.
Miss Regan received many honors, including the papal decoration Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice (1933).
As new organizations became affiliated with the National Council of Catholic Women, and as the scope of its services broadened, the need for trained social workers became pressing, and in 1921 the Council assumed control of "Clifton, " a temporary school for this purpose that had been established in 1918 by the National Catholic War Council under the leadership of Bishop John J. Burke.
The school was immediately reorganized as the National Catholic Service School for Women (later the National Catholic School of Social Service), and its training program was extended from six months to two years; at the completion of the course of study a certificate, or in the case of college graduates, a master's degree, was conferred by the Catholic University of America.
Miss Regan, now an authority in the field of social legislation, was in 1922 appointed instructor in community organization at the school. In 1925 she became assistant director, and she remained in that position until her death, serving for two of those years (1935 - 37) as acting director.
Her relationship with the students was always warm and motherly, and she was especially active in publicizing the work of the school and in raising funds. At the same time she continued her work with the National Council of Catholic Women, after 1927 on a half-time basis. In that capacity she testified before Congressional committees and was a member of the White House Conference on Children in a Democracy (1939 - 40).
She also served on the advisory committee of the federal Women's Bureau and on the board of directors of the National Travelers' Aid Society and participated in the American Federation of Housing Authorities and the Catholic Association for International Peace.
She died in Washington of a heart attack at the age of seventy-four. Following a solemn requiem mass in the San Francisco Cathedral, she was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, Daly City, California.
