Ohio University - Athena Yearbook (Athens, OH)

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Education is the right of the people . . . 1 A

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1 o Uni v e r s i t y HE Legislative history of Ohio University dates back to 1787 when the Congress of the United States passed its famous Ordinance for the promotion of the settlement of the great West. Two men are largely responsible for the existence of Ohio University: General Rufus Putnam, and the Reverend Manasseh Cutler. It was General Putnam who led the first band of settlers to the Hockhocking River, eventually starting a settlement on the ground where the city of Athens is today. The Reverend Cutler made the legislative and legal arrangements needed to set up the Ohio Company, which was the parent ( if the State of Ohio. General Putnam called the famous meeting at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston in 1786 to then and there consider and determine on a general plan of association for the Ohio Company. General Putnam was elected general supervisor of the Company, which was a tribute to this self-educated man, who, in the tradition of colonial America, made such institutions as Ohio University possible.

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Jiv t, i in 1 El t View of the campus showing Memorial Auditorium, Ellis Hall, and Cutler Hall. T HE Reverend Cutler was graduated from Yale, and he was recog- nized not only as an outstanding minister, but also as a highly skillfull botanist. Historians generally agree that he is largely responsible for the third article of Thomas Jefferson ' s Ordi- nance of 1787, which states that religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and to the happiness of man- kind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged. This was a new approach to education. It as- sumed that the state is responsible for the edu- cation of its members for the general good, a totally foreign concept to Eighteenth Century educational philosophy. Thus it was that Ohio University, first known as American University and then as American Western University, became the first land grant college in the United States, and the first uni- versity in the Northwest Territory.