Jesse W. Fell - Legacy

Legacy

• Many place names in Normal reflect Jesse W. Fell. Fell Park in Normal is located on land he set aside for public use in the 1850s. There is also a Fell Avenue extending from Bloomington to Normal. Hester Street in Normal is named for his wife Hester Brown Fell. Fort Jesse Road in Normal takes its name from the nickname given by the Fell family to their isolated rural home during the early years in Illinois.

• Co-founded, along with James Allen, the city of Clinton, Illinois. With Charles W. Holder he co-founded the town of Towanda, Illinois. He was one of five men who founded Dwight, Illinois. He was deeply involved with the founding of Pontiac, Illinois and in the creation of Livingston County, Illinois. Fell Park in Pontiac is named in his honor.

• Illinois State University has an aboreteum covering its main quadrangle known as the Fell Arboretum (in Jesse W. Fell's honour).

• Fell's granddaughter married Lewis Stevenson, making him an ancestor of the Illinois political family, including Democratic presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson II his great-grandson.

• Larchwood, in Lyon County, Iowa, was founded about 1872 by a group of McLean County, Illinois land developers Jesse W. Fell (10 November 1808 – 25 February 1887) and Charles W. Holder (25 September 1819 – 10 April 1900).

He was nationally known for his love of trees. Holder was a partner in many of Fell's projects...In the summer of 1869 Fell traveled to northwestern Iowa and selected a tract of about forty sections, more than 25,000 acres (100 km2) of land. Fell wrote,

"I have never beheld such a large body of surpassingly beautiful prairie as is here to be found. There is absolutely no waste of land, and scarce a quarter of a section not affording an admirable building site." Holder then entered the land. Larchwood was established at the center of their holdings. Fell frequently visited the site and in May 0f 1873 personally supervised the planting of some 100,000 saplings and tree cuttings. The town did not grow as rapidly as expected and in 1881 the development was sold to an Englishman Richard Sykes. There still is a small grove of larchwood trees growing in the Larchwood park. Larchwood has a Fell Street.