President of Iowa College (Grinnell College) from 1887-1900.
Career:
Principal of academy, Morrisville, VT, 1873-1875
Pastor, Congregational Church in Upper Montclair, NJ, 1880-1887
President, Iowa College, 1887-1900
Pastor, Cheyenne, WY, 1900-1901
President, Pomona College, 1902-1909
Leonard Fletcher Parker was a professor of Greek and Latin at Grinnell College from 1860-70 and of History from 1888-98. In the interim he taught at the University of Iowa. Parker was involved with the public schools, with the Underground Railroad, and with many aspects of life in the Grinnell area. He died in 1911 after the publication of his last book, History of Poweshiek County.
Curtis Bradford was Oakes Ames Professor of English Literature at Grinnell College where he served on the faculty from 1946 until his death in 1969. He was a scholar of the work of William Butler Yeats.
Yeats was an Irish poet and is considered one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century.
The Sanderson family lived in Grinnell in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Catherine primarily stayed in Grinnell while her husband Ben and daughter Sadie traveled along the East Coast working and visiting family. When Sadie grew older, she married D.A. Brooks and moved to Minnesota. Her daughter Mabel grew up with aspirations to become a dancer, and spent time in New York and L.A. The letters also include correspondence from Elias and Vince (?) (Ben's brothers), Sarah (Catherine's sister), Edna (Sadie's cousin), Orison (Sadie's cousin and Elias's son), James (Sadie's brother), and unidentified individuals named Roger, Jas, Ella, and Etta.
James McNally, a local Grinnell grocer, collected and photographed buildings and scenes of Grinnell, Iowa.
Grace Douglass was born March 10, 1882 in Osage, Iowa, the youngest of the six children of Truman O. and Maria Greene Douglass. In August 1882 the family moved to Grinnell where Rev. Douglass served as Secretary of the Iowa Congregational Home Missionary Society, a position he held for the next 25 years. Grace graduated from Iowa College in 1902, studied physical culture in the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics (a graduate department of Wellesley College) for a year, and taught physical training 1903-04 at Iowa College. In September 1904 she married Dr. Hiram Winnett Orr, an orthopedic surgeon in Lincoln, Nebraska. They had five children. Mrs. Orr was active in the Congregational church and with Camp Fire Girls. She is the author of A Layman's Guide to Ecumenicity, 1956.
Dr. Orr died in 1956, and Mrs. Orr later moved to the Mayflower Home in Grinnell. She died Aug. 23, 1962.
Wilson, Woodrow -- Correspondence
Born to a Quaker family in Indiana, Macy was raised on a farm near Lynnville, Iowa. At age 17 he walked fifteen miles across the prairie to enter Grinnell College. He remained associated with the college for the remainder of his life as a tutor, principal of the Academy, then as a respected professor. From 1885 to his retirement in 1912, he devoted himself to teaching political science and writing many books on political, social, religious, and international subjects. After retiring from Grinnell he travelled abroad more extensively and formed close associations with such people as James Bryce and George Bernard Shaw.