Stephen Norris Fellows

Background

Stephen was born on May 30, 1830, in Sandwich, New Hampshire, United States; the 14th child of Stephen Fellows Jr. and his second wife, Rachel (McGaffey) Fellows. In August 1834, the Fellows family moved to Illinois. They were among the first to settle in Palmyra Township in Lee County.

Fellows’s childhood home was a log cabin that served not only as a living space for 14 people but also as a schoolhouse and Methodist meeting place. The home, situated as it was along a main public road, hosted many visitors, among them a number of the local Indians, who were warmly welcomed by the family.

Education

Fellows’s education began at an early age. By the time he was three years old, he was already reading from the New Testament. At the age of four, he attended grammar school in New Hampshire, informing his teacher that reading was something he hadn’t learned but had “always known how” to do.

At the age of 18, Fellows enrolled in the Rock River Seminary at Mount Morris, Illinois, United States, but financial concerns forced him to withdraw in his fourth term. In 1851 he enrolled at Asbury College, now DePauw University, in Greencastle, Indiana, United States, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree, in 1854.

Career

Even before receiving Stephen's degree, he was offered a position teaching mathematics at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, which he accepted. At Cornell, he taught the first coeducational class in physics offered by the school.

In 1856 Fellows joined the Upper Iowa Conference of the Methodist Episcopal church. In 1860 Fellows resigned from Cornell and entered the ministry. Over the next few years he served congregations in several Iowa towns. In 1871, Cornell granted him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree.

Widely recognized for his temperance work in Iowa, Fellows wrote and lectured against the licensing of public houses, and served as president of the Johnson County Temperance Alliance and Anti-Saloon League. In a speech to the Temperance Alliance, Fellows expressed his support for the prohibitory law, “First, because it is right. Secondly, it is expedient. Thirdly, it strengthens moral reform. Fourthly, it will succeed.”

In 1867, Fellows was named principal of the State University of Iowa’s normal department. In 1923, State University of Iowa Professor of Education Forest Ensign wrote that in 1873 under Fellows’s direction, the elementary training was “completely merged in what was known as the collegiate department and a chair of didactics established, the first definitely recognized collegiate work of a permanent nature in the training of teachers in the United States.” Fellows held the position of Professor of Didactics and Political and Moral Science until his title was changed in 1878 to Professor of Mental and Moral Science and Didactics.

Fellows was such a fixture at the university that it came as some surprise when, in the spring of 1887, the State Board of Education called for his resignation and those of two other professors. In a statement to the Iowa State Press, one regent defended the decision, citing the need for the university to move forward and stop “clinging to things and methods that began to grow old when some of the students were mere children.” Fellows responded in a scathing open letter to the public. “The board has discharged the professors in compliance with an agreement made with anti-prohibitionists in the legislature of 1886, in which it was bargained that their discharge should pay the price of securing the University appropriation.” The board roundly denied the charge, but news reports and public opinion held mixed reactions.

Fellows had a lifelong interest in the Indians of the Midwest. While serving a pastorate at Toledo, Iowa, he became aware of the bleak living conditions of the local Meskwaki. In 1895 Fellows, along with Indian agent Horace M. Rebok and Dr. Charles Eastman, secretary of the Indian Department of the International Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association, formed the Indian Rights Association, with Fellows as its first president. Shortly thereafter, the association began efforts to secure funds from Congress to create the Indian Training School to educate males and females in reading, writing, and operating a farm. In 1896, through the Indian Appropriations Act, Congress approved an endowment of $35,000 for “an industrial boarding school at or near the reservation of the Sac and Fox Indians in Tama County, Iowa.”

For the remainder of his life, Fellows remained active in the ministry. He taught Sunday school for 60 of his 78 years. His History of the Upper Iowa Conference was considered among the finest of published conference histories, and in 1906 he was invited to give the keynote address at the semicentennial celebration of the conference at Maquoketa. Fellows died in Iowa City in 1908.

Works

More photos

• book

  • History of the Upper Iowa Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1856-1906 1907

Membership

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  In 1869 and 1872 Stephen Norris was president of the Iowa State Teachers Association.

  Iowa State Teachers Association , United States

Connections

In 1856 Stephen Norris married Sarah Leffingwell Matson. Over the following 10 years they had six children, two of whom died in childhood.

Father:

Stephen Fellows Jr.

Mother:

Rachel (McGaffey) Fellows

Spouse:

Sarah Leffingwell Matson Fellows

Sarah was an assistant to the dean of women at Cornell.

sibling:

Harriet Fellows Beede

sibling:

Mary Jane Fellows Allen

sibling:

Julia Maria Fellows Page

sibling:

Lydia McGaffey Fellows Oliver

sibling:

Samuel McGaffey Fellows

sibling:

Margaret Fellows

sibling:

Hannah Fellows Rogers

sibling:

Albion Fellows

sibling:

Mary Fellows Cavanagh

Son:

Albion Norris Fellows

Son:

Irwin Arthur Fellows

Daughter:

Lena Leota Fellows

Son:

Myrtle Matson Fellows

Daughter:

Ora Mabel Fellows

References

• The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa Iowa has been blessed with citizens of strong character who have made invaluable contributions to the state and to the nation. In the 1930s alone, such towering figures as John L. Lewis, Henry A. Wallace, and Herbert Hoover hugely influenced the nation’s affairs.
  2008