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Page 14 text:
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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
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Page 15 text:
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Melanchthon Sem- inary should be transferred to the older and larger seminary at Mar- thasville, while the Proseminar was to be removed from Evansville to Elm- hurst. This arrangement was completed on August 30 at the Melanchthon Seminary. On December 6, 1871, President Kranz arrived with fourteen students of the Proseminar at Elmhurst, and be- fore long had established the school as comfortably as possible in the house that had been the home of the Melanchthon Seminary. The school year was completed in June, 1872, and two of the students were graduated, both as teachers. Melanchthon Seminary was first begun as a private institution at Long Grove, Illinois, then removed to Waukegan, and a little later still to Lake Zurich. Here it was in rented quarters, when, in 1865, it was taken over by the Synod of the Northwest. Looking about for a permanent home, the directors were acquainted with an opportunity to buy a tract of about twenty acres, with a large house, in Elmhurst, to which Mr. Thomas Bryan, a public-spirited citizen of Elmhurst, was willing to add as a gift ten adjoining acres. The offer was accepted, and Melanchthon Seminary was removed to the new home at Elmhurst in the fall of 1869. We have already noticed that Melanchthon Seminary gave place in 1871 to the Proseminar that was removed from Evansville. Melanchthon House, the first home of the Proseminar, stood on the site of the present Commons, from which it was removed in 1895 to make way for the Commons that was built in 1896 as the gift of the Evangelical Synod to Elmhurst on the occasion of its twenty-fifth anniversary. Imagine the comforts which the old house af- forded fourteen students, besides President Kranz and his wife! The front room be- came the classroom, in which the students spent the greater part of the day, recit- ing by turns and studying at roughly made tables set before long benches. The professor ' s desk stood back of the double door leading into the rear room, which was a sort of a library and study for the professor. When a second teacher was called, the professors divided the time between them, since there was but one class- room. The students were given the room on the lower floor of the right wing as a study. The left wing was occupied by the kitchen and dining-room. On the second floor, two front rooms were the apartments of the president and his wife. The students slept in the attic, where the beds stood so close that you could get at them only from the foot. Making beds under such conditions was a difficult art which fell out of use. The windows were few and small, but the ventilation was excellent; in fact, the beds were frequently covered with several inches of snow blown through the cracks. If 14 students found Melanchthon House none too commodious, we may imagine the predicament of the president when the number rose to 24, and still more applicants sought admission. A new building became absolutely necessary, and what is now called the Old Hall (to be renamed Kranz Hall) was erected in 1873 at a cost of about $13,000. The number of students this at time was 34. Fully a dozen of these had lived for a year in a one-room shack that some of their number had built. Also 1873 saw the addition of a second teacher to the staff. Rev. Kranz had been the sole teacher as well as president the first year, and in the second year, 1872, Rev. F. Weygold was appointed as the first professor. This third instructor was placed in charge of the English department, which therefore may he considered the oldest separate department. 11
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