Lehigh University - Epitome Yearbook (Bethlehem, PA)

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Chapter One LEHIGH HISTORY ♦ ♦ HE FOUNDING of Lehigh was the outcome of a movement inaugurated in 1865 hy the Hon- orahle Asa Packer of Mauch Chunk, with the purpose of affording education in the learned professions as then recognized and training in technical hranches, the importance of which was then hecoming ap- pare nt in the economic readjustment following the close of the Civil War. Judge Packer was a pioneer in a most significant phase of industrial development, the transportation of coal from the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania to tidewater. He hecame the recognized master of canal hoat transportation. Then, foreseeing the supplanting of lioat ])y train as a carrier of coal, he huilt the Lehigh Valley Railroad from Mauch Chunk to Easton, later extending it to the port of Perth Amboy and deeper into the coal region of the Wyoming Valley and into New York State. The crowning work of the life of this great industrial leader whom President McCrea of the Pennsylvania Railroad once termed conspicuous among great men and public benefactors was his conception of a university in the Lehigh Valley which would provide for ' ' a complete professional educa- tion. His purpose, as set forth in the first Register of Lehigh LTniversity, included this statement: While such an institution promises to be of peculiar benefit to the Lehigh Vallev, and to the numerous other districts of Pennsylvania which are rich in mineral resources of many kinds, its usefulness will not be thus limited. It is intended for the benefit of the whole country; the instruction which it imparts will enable its graduates to play intelligent parts in exploring and developing the resources of all portions of the LTnited States. Lehigh ' s first trustees were, with few exceptions, practical men whose busi- ness lay in railroading and mining in the Lehigh Valley with the result that the technical branches of the LTniversity developed most quickly. Packer, how- ever, did not have in mind a purely technical school, as is evidenced by his refusal of a petition l)rought to him in 1878 by a body of Alumni, who wished to make Lehigh exclusively an engineering institution. William Bacon Stevens, Bishop of Pennsylvania, to whom Judge Packer had first confided his intentions of founding the University, was made President of the Board of Trustees. He proceeded to map out upon the fifty acres included in the founder ' s donation the ground scheme of the University. At his sugges- 13