Elmhurst College - Elms Yearbook (Elmhurst, IL)

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1887 1946 THAT WHICH HISTORY CAN GIVE US BEST IS THE ENTHUSIASM IT RAISES IN OUR HEARTS . . . — Goethe Three dates, all in the year 1871, are im- portant in the history of Elmhurst College. They are the seventeenth of January, the thirteenth of August and the sixth of December. On January 17, 1871, the Proseminar of the Evangelical Synod of the West was opened at Evansville, Indiana, with the Rev. Karl Friedrich Kranz as president and sole teacher. The enrollment at the beginning was nine, to which six more students were added in the course of the next few months. The opening exercises were conducted at nine o ' clock in the morning, with the formal reception of nine students by the Board of Control. The board, accompanied by the president, the students, pastors, and members of Zion Church of Evansville and others nearby adjourned to the single class room for a service of worship. Addresses were delivered by Pastor C. A. Clausen, who installed 10 Based on source material from Dr. P. N. Crusius President Kranz, and by the new president, who chose for his text Psalm 60, 12: Through God we shall do valiantly. Within a few weeks, five more students entered the new school. In the summer of 1871, the officers of the Evangelical Synod of the West met the officers of the Evangelical Synod of the Northwest to draw up an instrument for the union of these synods, which was accepted by both bodies in 1872 at a general conference. There was so little doubt, however, that the synods would unite, that the officers of both proceeded at once to effect a merger of the only institutions possessed by each — the theological seminary at Marthasville, Missouri, and the Proseminar Indiana, of the Synod of the West, and the Melanchthon Theological Seminary at Elm- hurst, Illinois, of the Synod of the Northwest. It was arranged that the students of the