1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Grinnell

GRINNELL, a city in Poweshiek county, Iowa, U.S.A., 55 m. E. by N. of Des Moines. Pop. (1900) 3860, of whom 274 were foreign-born; (1905) 4634; (1910) 5036. Grinnell is served by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, and the Iowa Central railways. It is the seat of Iowa College (co-educational), founded in 1847 by the Iowa Band (Congregationalists and graduates of New England colleges and Andover Theological Seminary, who had devoted themselves to home missionary educational work in Iowa, and who came to Iowa in 1843), and by a few earlier pioneers from New England. The college opened in 1848 at Davenport, and in 1859 removed to Grinnell, where there was a school called Grinnell University, which it absorbed. Closely affiliated with the college are the Grinnell Academy and the Grinnell School of Music. In 1907–1908 the College had 463 students, the Academy had 129 students, and the School of Music had 141 students. Among the manufactures are carriages and gloves. The city was named in honour of one of its founders, Josiah Bushnell Grinnell (1821–1891), a Congregational clergyman, friend of and sympathizer with John Brown, and from 1863 to 1867 a member of the National House of Representatives. Grinnell was settled in 1854, was incorporated as a town in 1865, and in 1882 was chartered as a city of the second class. In 1882 it suffered severely from a cyclone.