The "Athens of Iowa"

My Darling Anna celebrates the educational and cultural legacy carried by Dr. William R. Gray from Mount Pleasant, Iowa to his new community on Bellingham Bay.

At the age of eight, Will Gray moved with his family to Mount Pleasant, a small community in the southeastern part of Iowa.  By that time, Mount Pleasant had achieved the reputation as the “Athens of Iowa,” due to its exceptional educational institutions, starting with its early settlers. 

Samuel Howe and James Harlan are credited with the educational excellence of Mount Pleasant. Howe started a school in 1841 above the jail in an old log cabin, and would go on to form Howe’s Academy.  Many of Howe’s students would become leading citizens of the community.   James Harlan had been principal of Iowa City College and was elected Iowa’s first Superintendent of Public Education.  He would go on to become President of Iowa Wesleyan University before going on to Washington D.C. as a United States Senator.

The Mt. Pleasant Literary Institute started in 1842 and was later renamed the Mt. Pleasant Collegiate Institute.   When James Harlan became president in 1853 the school was named Iowa Wesleyan University (today Iowa Wesleyan College).  Women were admitted into the institution in 1854.  Some notable graduates include Lucy Killpatrick Byrkit, who, in 1859,  became the first woman to graduate with a Liberal Arts degree at an institute of higher learning in the United States.  Bell Babb Mansfield, a graduate in 1866, became the first woman admitted to the Bar in 1869.  Susan Mosely Grandison was the first black graduate of Iowa Wesleyan and perhaps the first in the nation.

In 1869, a women’s society, P.E.O. was formed by seven woman attending Iowa Wesleyan University.  Today that philanthropic organization, dedicated to promoting higher education for women, has grown to 250,000 members in the United States and Canada.

Mount Pleasant, Iowa was an enlightened community with a strong focus on education and culture.   This influence would be passed down to a new community -- Bellingham, Washington, when Will Gray was elected to the Bellingham School Board in 1906.  He was President of the School Board for 10 years, retiring in 1918.  During those years, he oversaw the construction of Silver Beach School in 1912 and Lowell School in 1914.

Iowa Wesleyan College