Jesse W. Fell

Fell was born in rural southeastern Chester County, Pennsylvania, to Quaker parents of modest means, Rebecca (Roman) and Jesse Fell. He attended local Friends schools as well as a private boy's academy and briefly taught in local public schools before migrating to Ohio to study law in 1828.

In 1831 Fell moved to Illinois, opening Bloomington's first law offices and beginning his career in real estate. Fell was especially active during the Illinois land boom in the late 1830s; with James Allin, Fell co-founded the town of Clinton, Illinois, and worked to create DeWitt County arranging for his brother, Kersey H. Fell, to become the clerk responsible for organizing the new county. He established Livingston County, which he named, and backed the founders of Pontiac, Illinois, which he also named. Fell invested in lands in Bloomington, Chicago, Milwaukee, Danville, and other places in central and eastern Illinois.

Fell also founded Bloomington's first newspaper, The Bloomington Observer and McLean County Advocate in 1837 and, after several years running a fruit orchard in Adams County, returned to McLean County and worked as an agent for the former Alton & Springfield Railroad to secure the right of way through McLean County. He helped found the town of Towanda and with his brother founded the town of Dwight. and later defeated an effort to have the railroad bypass his extensive land holdings in Pontiac. He sold lots in Decatur, Lexington, Clinton, El Paso, Joliet, and LeRoy and in 1855 he purchased timber land and began operation a sawmill near Ullin in southern Illinois.

In 1854 Fell arranged for the Chicago and Mississippi Railroad to cross the Illinois Central Railroad north of Bloomington where he had founded the town of North Bloomington. In 1860, Illinois State Normal University relocated there from a site in downtown Bloomington, resulting in the town being renamed Normal in 1865. Fell was an enthusiastic arborist who developed an extensive park around his home, and was known for planting trees in his real estate holdings.