Ellen Clara Sabin was president of Downer College from 1891-1895 and of Milwaukee-Downer College from 1895-1921. The oldest of 11 children, she was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, near Madison, in 1850 and brought up on a farm near Windsor, also close to the capital.
Her formal education was abbreviated. After several years in a District School, she entered the preparatory department of the University of Wisconsin at the age of 15 and remained there for three years without graduating. While at the university she began a long teaching career by conducting a small country school near Sun Prairie; she continued to teach in public schools in that town and in Madison, where she became, at the age of 19, principal of the Fourth Ward School.
See also: Downer Women, 1851-2001
