By Eric Stock

NORMAL – Jesse Fell is known for a lot of things, including helping to create the Town of Normal and Illinois State University.

But there’s a significant part of his past you might not know about.

Jesse Fell served as paymaster for the Union Army under President Abraham Lincoln as a way to support the Union without violating his pacifist sensibilities as a Quaker.

“It was a way for him to support the Union effort without being seen as someone who was just backing out,” said Becky Stowe, an intern at Illinois State’s Milner Library.

Stowe has been studying documents the university purchased through a Lincoln endowment to put on display. The documents detail Fell’s role as paymaster during the Civil War.

She noted how odd it seemed that Fell chose to remain unarmed and without security. He served in the post from July of 1862 to October of 1863 before he returned to Bloomington.

The library’s head of collections, Maureen Brunsdale, said the collection gives us valuable insight into the financial and hierarchical structure of the Union Army.

“It kind of fires the imagination, looking at these documents, knowing that somebody as pivotally important to the community and this university handled these things,” Brunsdale said. “I think that’s kind of magical.”

Brunsdale said the documents show how Fell oversaw the payment of soldiers and allotments for commanding officers to have servants, their own horses, laundry service and other amenities.

An example of how these documents bring the war to life: the letter is which Fell was asked to become paymaster was signed by a paymaster official who just five months later was decapitated by a cannonball in the battle at Stones River in Tennessee.

The documents can be found with the library’s special collections.

Eric Stock can be reached at [email protected].