George Frederick Magoun

Who was George Frederick Magoun?

George Frederick Magoun, a member of the Iowa Band of Congregationalist ministers, was the first president of Iowa College, where he served as college president from 1865 to 1885.

George Magoun was born in Bath, Maine in 1821, where he attended Bath Academy before entering Bowdoin College. He graduated from Bowdoin in 1841. After Bowdoin, he taught at schools in Galena, Illinois and Platteville, Wisconsin from 1844-1846. Magoun continued his studies at Andover Seminary and completed his divinity degree in 1847.

Now an ordained Congregationalist minister, Magoun and other members of the Iowa Band moved to the Midwest to establish congregations. Magoun led congregations in Davenport, Iowa and Lyons, Iowa, also studying law in Burlington, Iowa. He became a founding trustee of Iowa College, then located in Davenport. In 1854 and 1855, as the town's relations with the college worsened, Magoun and other trustees pushed to move to the new town of Grinnell, Iowa. At the end of the Civil War in 1865, Magoun was inaugurated as the college's first president.

Magoun was a liberal president, permitting the teaching of evolution despite his personal disagreement with Darwin's work. As the first college president, he attempted to realize his vision for a college in the West: