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JESSE W. FELL
Jesse Fell was born November
10, 1808 on
his father’s farm at New Garden, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Fell was a fourth generation Pennsylvanian,
his great grandfather having arrived from England in 1705. He was the third of nine children. Jesse was
raised in a Quaker family. One aspect of
this religion at that time was that every boy needed to learn a
mechanical
skill. The choice picked for young Jesse
was to become a tailor. Having no
interest in this he went to a “subscription,” or pay school. He worked to pay his own way and learned much
from his teacher, who was one of the leading botanists of his day. While still in his teens, Jesse became a
teacher himself and earned a fairly decent salary, two dollars per
student per
quarter. In 1828, at the age of twenty, Jesse decided it was time to
head
west. He headed out with the clothes on
his back plus what he could carry in a small pack.
The voyage was made almost entirely on foot.
On his trek west, Fell settled in Steubenville, Ohio
for about two years, where he studied law with the noted law firm of
Stokely
and Marsh. After his course of study, he
was admitted to the bar. General Stokely
was impressed by his performance and offered Fell a partnership in his
law
firm, which Fell declined. Fell
continued further west to Illinois
in 1832. He came to Pekin,
where the family of William Brown, whom he had known from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,
had
emigrated to Illinois
earlier and settled near Delavan. He was
persuaded by William Brown to stay with them for the winter and teach
his
children. One of those children, Hester
Brown, was Fell’s future wife.
In the spring of 1833, Fell moved east to McLean County
and settled in the new town of Bloomington. He found a place to board with James Allin,
who had a house on East and Grove Streets, and opened his own law
office. Fell became Bloomington’s first and, for a short
time,
only lawyer.
Never really being that fond of the law
profession, in 1834 he was appointed as Commissioner of Schools of
McLean
County. This position introduced him to
the venture of buying and selling land, which was much more exciting to
Fell
than being a teacher or a lawyer. In
1835 he was made an agent of the State Bank of Illinois, where he learned the
mortgage
business. In 1836, after practicing law
for three years in Bloomington,
Fell finally became tired of practicing law altogether.
He decided to turn over his law office, books
and papers to David Davis, who had also recently settled in Bloomington.
He then began to make investments of his own, but the
Panic of 1837 caused
him to lose most of his fortunes. By
1841 he declared bankruptcy and, needing income, returned to the
practice of
law. Once again, he only practiced law
for a few years. The main benefit of his
return to the law was becoming acquainted with some of the leading men
of McLean
County
during that time period, including Abraham Lincoln.
On January 26th, 1838, Fell
married Hester Vernon Brown, daughter of his old friend, William Brown,
in Tazewell
County.
Jesse and Hester had eight children:
William Brown Fell, Flora Maria Fell, Fannie C. Fell,
Alice C. Fell,
Elizabeth B. Fell, Henry Clay Fell, Clara Vernon Fell, and Rachel Fell. Six of their children reached adulthood:
Fannie
C. Fell, Alice C. Fell, Elizabeth B. Fell, Henry Clay Fell, Clara
Vernon Fell,
and Rachel Fell. Jesse and Hester
lived
in Bloomington
for several years after their marriage in a farm house, which he later
sold to
Judge David Davis.
In 1845, Fell and his family moved near Quincy, IL
where he
bought and ran a fruit farm until 1851, when his friends urged him to
move back
to Bloomington
to take charge of The Observer, the
newspaper that would eventually become The
Pantagraph.
Fell was also very influential in securing
the Illinois Central Railroad and the Chicago Alton Railroad lines
running
through Bloomington. By 1854 it was agreed that the Illinois
Central and Chicago and Alton
railroads would intersect two miles north of town in North Bloomington
(now Normal).
After securing these two railroad lines
for Bloomington,
Fell wanted to build a town where these two railroads intersected. He “intended to spare no effort to build here
a town that should have for its characteristic sobriety, morality, and
good
society, and all elements for an educational center.” Fell helped lay
out the
new town and in the summer of 1854, the first lots were sold. Fell also built his residence on “the hill.” The family moved into their new home, which
was named “Greenwood,”
in 1856.
Perhaps one of Jesse Fell’s greatest
contributions to McLean County was his role in the founding of the
“Normal
School,” which would later become Illinois State
University. Fell wanted some sort of college or seminary
of learning to be included in his new town.
He believed it “would be a means of building up an
intelligent
community, which he desired very much.”
On February 18, 1857, the State of Illinois passed a bill
creating the State Board of Education and directing them to locate and
establish a normal school for the training of teachers.
Fell, a big believer in the worth of
education, channeled his energy and money into the effort to get the
new school
located here. Fell employed the help of
his friend Abraham Lincoln, who was then a lawyer on the 8th
Judicial
Circuit, to draw up a form of bond or guaranty.
This was to be signed by the “responsible citizens” of Bloomington
who had donated land or money for the “Normal” school to be located in North Bloomington.
He involved almost every male citizen of note, which
included David
Davis, Ashal Gridely, William McCullough, Mishak Pike, Edwin Bakewell,
Leonard
Swett, Asa Moore, William Ward Orme, and William Major.
Fell was the largest contributor, pledging
$9,000 worth of his own money and property with the promise of more in
the
future. In all, Fell was able to raise
$141,725,
which was almost three times the amount that the town of Peoria’s bid of
$50,032. Because of the amount of money
and land Fell
was able to raise and the fact that the location of the school in North
Bloomington would be three-fourths of a mile from the Illinois Central
and
Chicago-Alton Railroad junction, the State Board of Education decided
in the
Summer of 1857 that Bloomington
would be the location of the normal school.
Fell’s role at ISU would remain very active
throughout the rest of his life. He was
a member of ISU’s Board in 1866-1867 and again in 1871-1872. He also continued to petition funding from the
Illinois State Board of Education.
One issue that would arise towards the end
of Fell’s life dealt with one of the original donors of land to ISU;
the issue
would not be resolved until after Fell’s death.
Edwin Bakewell, one of the eighty-five men who had donated
land or money,
requested that his subscription of 40 acres be given back to him. He claimed that he had stipulated that those
40 acres of land were to be used for the teaching of experimental
agricultural
chemistry. However, the bond of deed
Bakewell
had signed never documented anything about this stipulation. The bond of deed only stated that the
“institution should be located at or near its present site.”
Fell had made efforts to secure the State Industrial
School,
which would have
added the type of agricultural and industrial curriculum which both he
and
Bakewell had wanted. However, Bloomington’s bid of $470,000 was rejected and
the
location of the State Industrial School,
(know now as the University
of Illinois), was
given
to Champaign/Urbana in 1867, who had only bid $285,000.
Bakewell had suffered severe financial
losses during the Panic of 1873 and in 1875, Bakewell asked the State
Board of
Education to return the 40 acres of land on the “grounds that no
attempt had
been made to carry out the conditions” of the land grant. The Board
concluded
that since they had not been given the original subscription papers
Bakewell claimed
stated how the land was to be used, that the land would not be returned
to
him.
Throughout the 1880s, Bakewell would
continue to fight to get his land back. Fell
wrote a letter of support for the university and the State Board of
Education
in 1887, stating that the land was being used as it had originally been
intended
to be, and that Bakewell’s claim had no substance.
The debate over Bakewell’s 40 acres of land
would continue until 1896, when the Illinois Supreme Court sided, once
again, with
the university and the State Board of Education that the bond of deed
Bakewell
had signed only stipulated that the land he donated to ISU was being
used
within the parameters set by the original bond of deed.
In addition to higher education, Fell was
also bitterly opposed to slavery and was a strong supporter of
integrating the
schools of Bloomington and Normal after the
Civil War. On April 24, 1867, a citizens’
meeting of the
town of Normal
was held where the issue of whether or not an African American student
should
be admitted to the public schools of their district was discussed. Fell, who was in favor of allowing it, wrote
in a letter to the committee that he was outraged at the fact that
“colored
children were excluded from the public schools and is mortified that”
in the
town of Normal
children are excluded from “public education because of the color of
their
skin.” Edwin Bakewell, who was on the
opposite side of the issue, stated that while the “function of all
public
schools is to educate all,” that because the law dictates that African
American
children cannot attend their schools, he must abide and uphold that law. This was yet another issue where Fell and
Bakewell
did not see eye to eye.
Fell’s efforts towards the founding of ISU
in Normal were became known as his
greatest
contribution to McLean
County. However, Fell is also known for his love of
horticulture. In the 1860s, Fell was
appointed to superintend the work of ornamenting ISU’s grounds with
trees. Fell was suited for this task
because he had
previously studied arboriculture when he was a young man living in Pennsylvania. To help him with this task, Fell employed
William Saunders of Pennsylvania,
the same man who had designed the landscape of Fell’s estate several
years
earlier. However, because McLean County
was situated in the middle of what was known as the “Grand Prairie,” there were hardly any
trees
in the area, except along streams and near other bodies of water. To solve this problem, Fell planted trees on
his own land, then transplanted them to ISU’s campus.
He got trees donated from local nurseries, as
well. He is said to have personally
supervised all the plantings on ISU’s campus and he chose trees that
would be
suited to Illinois’
climate and conditions. It was his hope
that every kind of tree from Central Illinois
could be planted on the grounds of ISU so that the studies of botany
and
forestry could be pursued, though this very ambitious goal was never
realized.
He was also responsible for beautifying
the town of Normal,
in that he oversaw the planting of 13,000 trees in the area. He was even granted a special act from the
Illinois State Legislature to permit the fencing of young trees planted
on open
streets for their temporary protection. His
efforts to beautify ISU’s campus and the town of Normal and his love of trees and
plants, inspired
his nickname, “the Tree Planter.”
Fell had always had a great amount of
energy and was very active even in the last years of his life. About a year before he died, Fell suffered
from a long, severe illness, from which his recovery was very slow. Shortly before his death, he had made a trip
to Chicago, during which he became ill
again and
was forced to return to Normal. It was from this illness that Fell never
recovered. He died on February 25, 1887
at his home on 600 South Broadway. The
Pantagraph, which had followed his illness from the beginning, printed
a series
of articles after his death about his many contributions to the
communities of Bloomington and Normal, the
State of Illinois,
and the country as a whole. He was
buried in Evergreen
Cemetery.
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