Scope and Content Note
The papers of Jesse W. Fell (1808-1887) span the years 1806 to 1965 with the bulk of the material produced during the period 1830-1887. Fell's papers reflect his pursuits as a lawyer, land speculator, educator, newspaper editor, and political leader in Illinois and include biographical material, broadsides, calling cards, college catalogs, correspondence, genealogies, land grants, ledgers, lithographs, maps, miscellaneous notes, newspaper clippings, notebooks, obituaries, petitions, photographs, poems, printed matter, scrapbooks, speeches, stock certificates, wills, and writings. The papers have been arranged in three series: Correspondence, Speeches and Writings File, and Subject File.
The Correspondence series consists of three subgroups of Family Correspondence, General Correspondence, and Published and Transcribed Correspondence. It was Fell who urged Abraham Lincoln to write his autobiography, and much of the correspondence in the Family Correspondence, particularly that of Emmet L. Richardson, centers around the three-page autobiography and an accompanying letter. Lincoln sent the autobiography to Fell in December 1859, and Fell arranged for its publication in eastern newspapers prior to the 1860 election. Both items were ultimately acquired by the Library of Congress and are now among the papers of Abraham Lincoln and published in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Second Supplement, 1848-1865, Roy P. Basler and Christian O. Basler, editors (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, circa 1990). Members of the Fell and Brown families, including Fell's wife Hester Vernon Brown Fell, his father Jesse Fell, and his daughters Alice and Fannie Fell, are also represented in the Family Correspondence. Fell's Quaker heritage is reflected widely in these letters.
National and local figures of the time are represented in the General Correspondence. Some of Fell's views on Reconstruction can be found in a letter to James Gillespie Blaine of March 1885. Most of the letters from national figures, such as David Davis, Stephen A. Douglas, Horace Greeley, Abraham Lincoln, Owen Lovejoy, Horace Mann, John G. Nicolay, and Lyman Trumbull, however, primarily concern local and state issues.
The Published and Transcribed Correspondence contains typed transcriptions of selected letters sent and received by Fell. The original letters are in the Family Correspondence and the General Correspondence.
A brief autobiography written by Fell in 1886 is found in the Speeches and Writings File, along with assorted speeches dated 1830-1833 and 1870. The file also includes a paper written in 1845 on the repudiation of Illinois state debt and handwritten notes on the founding of Normal, Illinois.
The Subject File contains material relating to the Lincoln autobiography, including letters to and from Fell descendant Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-1965), Collier's magazine, the Library of Congress, the University of Chicago, and Illinois State Normal University. Also in the Subject File are several biographical sketches of Fell, his admission papers to the Ohio bar, his certificate to practice law in Illinois, genealogies of the Fell and Brown families, an obituary of his mother-in-law, Hester Milner Gordon (1777-1871), and land grants awarded to Henry Flesher, Robert Miller, Joseph Gilleys, and James Ordway for their military service during the War of 1812. The Subject File also contains items reflecting the history of Fell's adopted town of Bloomington, Illinois, the adjoining town of Normal, and nearby Normal University (later renamed Illinois State Normal University), which Fell helped found.
Fell was an fervent arborist, and he was well known for the thousands of trees and shrubbery that he planted in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, and Illinois. The Subject File includes a pamphlet and a photocopy of a plat of Larchwood Colony in Lyons County, Iowa, a farming development where Fell planted over one hundred thousand trees and cuttings.