Indiana University - Arbutus Yearbook (Bloomington, IN)

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Indiana Collec

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A plan of building was proposed on the plan of Princeton College in New- Jersey — the historic Nassau Hall. Over twenty months passed after the loca- tion was made before the work of building was actually begun. Two buildings were agreed upon, one for the reception of students and one for a professor ' s dwelling; the latter was thirty-one feet long and eighteen feet wide and cost $891. The seminary edifice proper was sixty feet long and thirty-one feet wide, two stories high, faced to the east, ss ML- with a chapel and several recitation rooms, costing in all 2400. In this small way was the spirit of the constitutional convention at Corydon, June 1816, embodied, where it was written that, It shall be the duty of the General Assembly, as soon as circumstances will permit, to pro- vide by law for a general system of education ascending in a regular gradua- tion from township schools to a State University, wherein tuition shall be gratis and equally open to all . This beginning of the future Univer- sity in large measure was the result of the untiring efforts of David H. Maxwell at the sessions of the General Assembly during December and Jan- uary, 1820, and of him can it be better said, more than any other, that he was the father of Indiana University . On (January 20, 1820, the day we celebrate as Foundation Day, the law which Dr. Maxwell sponsored was signed by the Governor and became the law of the land. It was not until the first of May, 1824, that the Seminary was opened, and that Baynard R. Hall, a young man destined to be the first professor, a graduate of Union College and a minister of the Presbyterian church, began his duties as teacher. On this first May day morning, a heterogenous crowd of youthful candidates for seminary learning awaited Professor Hall at the new college . Many of the young men carried with them their spelling books and readers and ink- bottles and copy-books, having but forsaken the village schoolmaster for the The Seminary

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higher learning . But it was Greek and Latin only at the new college , and the boys with the spelling books and readers and ink-bottles and copy-books were soon returned to the drowsy hum of lessons in the town schoolhouse. Ten boys were left in the Seminary after the weeding out of candidates, to begin the courses in Greek and Latin. All the students, as far as is known, were from Indiana homes, and nearly every county on the border and many of the inland counties were lepresented during the period of the Seminary which followed. Those who became students at the new college either walked from their homes to Bloomington, ot travelled on horse-back. Most of them would ride and tie , amethodbywhichtwo would travel with one horse; one would ride in advance a given distance and tie the horse and walk on, leaving his companion to come up and mount and ride on past the foot-man a proper distance, when he would in turn dismount, tie, and walk on. Those who walked carried their clothes with them, tied up in a handkerchief, and in riding, the habit was to carry all clothes neces- sary for a term in the saddle bags. Li those days of a hundred years ago, the students found rooms and board with the citizens of the town, in much the same manner as students have done since, and a house where two or more stayed was designated a fort after the old forts built against the Lidians during the troublesome times of 1811 to 1814. Not more than three lumdred persons lived in Bloomington at the time, in the little clustering of cabins around the square. For a period of three years — 1824 to 1827 — Baynard R. Hall was the only pro- fessor in the Indiana Seminary. From the report which Dr. Maxwell made in 1828, we learn that thirteen students attended the Seminary the first year; fif- teen the second, and twenty-one the third. It was resolved by the board during the second year that there should be taught English Grammer, Logic, Rhetoric, Geo- graphy, Moral and Natural Philosophy, and Euclid ' s Elements of Geometry, but for some reason, according to the report of Dr. Max- well, these requirements were not taught. John M. Harney, a young man fresh from Aliami University, was elected in 1827 as a professor in pure and applied mathematics, and entered upon his duties in the autumn of that year. At the opening of the follow- ing fall and winter season, about forty