From collection Candidates
In 1888 Ella Sabin was elected to a three year term as the Portland, Oregon superintendent of city schools. Sabin came to office after serving as principal of Portland's North school, the first woman principal in the Northwest. In her biographical entry in A Woman of the Century, she states "[A]n enlightened board gave her equal pay with men in the same position." In 1891 she was offered the presidency of Downer College, Fox Lake, Wisconsin and left Portland. Sabin was born in Wisconsin and attended Wisconsin State University. As a child she was close friends with Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Clara Colby, each of whom became well known nineteenth century writers, Wilcox as a novelist and poet, and Colby as a newspaper writer/publisher and reformer.
