archaeologist Businessman farmer naturalist teacher
Ellison Orr was born on June 14, 1857, in his uncle’s log house three miles west of McGregor. A boyhood spent roaming the woods, sloughs, and streams of the family farm near Postville fueled a natural curiosity and kindled a memory for detail about the natural world and pioneer life that stayed with Orr his entire life.
Ellison Orr’s formal education began in the rural school just north of the family’s home and ended with high school graduation in Postville, locations where he later taught. The personal initiative inspired him to extend his schooling, even learning surveying from a Civil War topographical engineer.
In addition to farming and teaching, Ellison Orr’s professions included land salesman, bank cashier, and telephone company superintendent. He served in the Iowa National Guard and on the Iowa State College Board of Trustees. Pastime studies in geology, botany, ornithology, and archaeology were expertly pursued and often published. According to Orr, his archaeological pursuits stemmed from a brief foray into politics. In 1878 he ran for superintendent of schools on the Republican ticket. Although he lost the election, treks campaigning in the Upper Iowa valley provided the opportunity to collect and sometimes purchase stone artifacts and prehistoric pottery from local farmers.
Over the next five decades, Ellison Orr honed his archaeological knowledge and recording skills on sites in northeast Iowa, many of which were later incorporated into Effigy Mounds National Monument. He documented collections, precisely surveyed and mapped major mound groups and rock shelters, recorded rock art, and conducted controlled excavations. In 1913 Ellison Orr published his first papers on northeast Iowa archaeology in the Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science.
From the start, Ellison Orr recognized the finite nature of archaeological resources and called for their preservation. In 1915 he became a charter member of the Allamakee County Historical and Archaeological Society, whose goals were echoed in the articles of incorporation for the Iowa Archeological Society, founded 36 years later at Orr’s instigation. A congressional proposal in 1915 to preserve nearly 200 earthworks within a national park near McGregor received Orr’s published endorsement in 1917. This nascent endeavor came to full fruition with the creation of Effigy Mounds National Monument via sustained efforts and lobbying by both Orr and Keyes.
Beginning in 1934, federal relief funds permitted Keyes to hire Ellison Orr for the statewide Iowa Archeological Survey. Orr’s half-century of familiarity with northeast Iowa archaeology, well-informed understanding of geology, and surveying skills afforded Keyes, director of the survey, an excellent field supervisor. Over the next five years, as assistant director, Ellison Orr surveyed and excavated sites across Iowa, accumulating information that helped Keyes delineate the state’s prehistoric Indian cultures.
During the last decades of his life, in addition to efforts directed toward creating Effigy Mounds National Monument (established in 1949), Ellison Orr continued to conduct fieldwork and to write and organize his archaeological reports.
Ellison Orr and his first wife, the former Belle Makepeace (1859-1915), had three sons and a daughter.
