From its earliest days, Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, pioneered daring and unconventional educational policies and practices. On January 21, 1869, seven Iowa Wesleyan students, bonded by their friendship, founded the P.E.O. Sisterhood.
Our Founders, Alice Bird Babb, Mary Allen Stafford, Hattie Briggs Bousquet, Franc Roads Elliott, Alice Virginia Coffin, Ella Stewart and Suela Pearson Penfield, took advantage of the nurturing, open environment at Iowa Wesleyan to create the Sisterhood, which has grown to include more than 350,000 initiated members in 5,969 chapters in the United States and Canada.
Iowa Wesleyan is not only the birthplace of P.E.O., but it also graduated the first woman licensed to practice law in the United States, Arabella “Belle” Babb Mansfield. Belle later became Founder Alice Bird Babb’s sister-in-law when Alice married Belle’s brother Washington Irving Babb in 1873. As P.E.O. grew to be a source of encouragement and support for women to realize their potential in whatever worthwhile endeavor they chose, it is certain that our Founders were inspired and motivated by fellow alumna Belle’s ambition and accomplishments.
Belle was born in Sperry, Iowa, in 1846. Her mother, having heard that Mount Pleasant had excellent schools, moved the family there when Belle was a child. In 1866, Belle graduated from Iowa Wesleyan. The following year, she began studying law with her brother in the Ambler Law Office. In June 1868, she married John Mansfield, a professor of science at Iowa Wesleyan.
Belle never practiced law in the traditional sense. It is likely that she was too involved with teaching and women’s issues at the time. Throughout her career, not only was she a professor at Iowa Wesleyan College, Simpson College, Indianola, Iowa, and DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, but Belle was a strong advocate of women’s voting rights. In the fall of 1869, she joined the executive committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association. The following spring, she became president and chair of the first Iowa state-wide women’s suffrage convention.
During the early 1870s, Belle traveled extensively in Europe observing the courts of London, and studying law in France. In the summer of 1893, Belle addressed the National League of Women Lawyers at the Chicago World’s Fair, where she was officially acknowledged as the first woman to be admitted to the bar in the United States. After enjoying a successful career as an educator, public orator, world traveler, art historian and journalist, Belle died in 1911 at age 64.
Just as our Founders’ legacy lives on through the P.E.O. Sisterhood’s sponsorship of the projects-to-date nearly 77,800 women have benefited from our organization’s educational grants, loans, awards, scholarships, special projects and stewardship of Cottey College—Belle’s legacy is alive and well. Nowhere is this more true than on the Iowa Wesleyan campus where an eight-foot tall bronze statue of her image has been erected.
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Visible from most campus buildings and easily viewed from one of Mount Pleasant’s busier streets, the statue and its surroundings invite students and visitors to stop and learn more about Belle, Iowa Wesleyan College and the history of women in southeast Iowa. The statue stands on four inches of polished granite in the center of a circular concrete plaza that is 34 feet in diameter. Placed at four equidistant points around the plaza are polished granite benches. In front of each bench, a bronze plaque explains more about the statue or about Belle’s place in history. Sculptor Benjamin Victor took care to carefully aim Belle’s gaze directly into the eyes of young women who will look up to her for inspiration. He said, “The countless young women who look up at Belle in the years to come will see that with education and perseverance they too are capable of changing their world.”
The statue was dedicated at a formal ceremony on May 2, 2008, by Former First Lady of Iowa Christie Vilsack, Original Chapter A, Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Christie remarked, “I grew up in Mount Pleasant knowing nothing about Belle Babb Mansfield. I want girls growing up here to know that women can do and be anything they choose. I want young women…to know that this community has always nurtured women who achieve. I want student athletes who compete at the college, children riding their bikes to school and visitors from far away…to learn about Belle Babb Mansfield.”
The statue of Belle will serve as a reminder for generations of women that they can achieve anything they put their minds to. Our Founders would definitely approve of this much deserved recognition of such an outstanding, pioneering woman. Belle is representative of not only personal accomplishment, but also of the welcoming and progressive climate of the Mount Pleasant community. Her statue will bring attention to her achievements and to those of other significant contributors to the Iowa Wesleyan community such as the Founders of the P.E.O. Sisterhood
