Jesse Macy, the thirteenth of fourteen children, was born to Quaker parents in Indiana, but the family moved to central Iowa in 1856[3] and started farming outside Lynnville, near the newly founded town of Grinnell.

[5] During the 1870s, Macy started what would become a long-term correspondence with James Bryce, a noted British jurist and politician.

Macy supported liberal education in a newspaper article, saying: Suppose some emissary of darkness had spied out our liberty and had arraigned Iowa College before the public as a place where young people were taught the dangerous doctrine of evolution.

It may be that at so early a date the young professors would have been sent adrift and the public would have been assured that Iowa College was a place where only safe opinions were allowed!

[3] In February 2008, Grinnell's board of trustees voted to name one of the college office buildings "Jesse Macy House" in memory of the long-serving professor.