Ellen Clara Sabin

Ellen Clara Sabin (November 29, 1850 – February 3, 1949; also known as Ella) was the president of the Milwaukee-Downer College in the U.S. state of Wisconsin from 1891 to 1921. She was a well-known advocate for the education of women. Sabin developed her own curriculum and teaching style which she practiced in both Wisconsin and Oregon before accepting the position as college president at Downer College.

"‘Education is liberation, and it may free women only from her ignorance, littleness, weakness, and fears.’" - Ellen Sabin.

Early life

Sabin was born November 29, 1850, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, to Samuel H. and Adelia Bordine Sabin. When she was an infant, her family moved to California as part of the gold rush, and returned to Wisconsin in 1854. As the oldest of 11 children, Sabin was often responsible for her siblings. She, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and Clara Bewick Colby were close childhood friends.

At the age of fifteen, Sabin enrolled in the University of Wisconsin. She was among the first women admitted to the university. At the university, she did not pursue any specific course of study. While attending college, she began teaching at the Sun Prairie Grade School in her hometown which was near the university. Sabin left the university after three years without graduating, accepted a job teaching seventh grade in Madison, Wisconsin. By the time Sabin was nineteen, she was the principal of the Fourth Ward School.

College president News of Sabin's success in Portland reached Sabra Warner Lewis, an acquaintance of Sabin's back in Wisconsin. Although she had always specialized in elementary education, Sabin was contacted by Lewis’s brother, a trustee of a "small backwoods college in Wisconsin" known as Downer College for Women in Fox Lake, Wisconsin. Downer was in need of someone to take over the school's presidency. Even though Downer offered her twice the salary they had paid to any previous president, it was still substantially less than she was making in Portland. So when Sabin decided to accept the position of college president, she took a major decrease in pay. She was then honored as president emerita from 1921 to 1949.