Mercer University - Cauldron Yearbook (Macon, GA)

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THIS IS YOUR LIFE, MERCER This school year 1957-1958 marks your oner hun- dred and twenty-fifth birthday. Mercer. Though you were conceived in the minds and hearts of Georgia Baptists earlier, you were born on January' 1-1, 1833. Now that you are a century and a quarter old it is fitting that we. the CAULDRON Staff, review your years of struggle and achievement, You began modestly as Mercer Institute—a manual labor school for boys with 39 students. Today your sons and daughters number 20,000. plus twelve hun- dred now roaming over your beautiful S5 acre campus and through your numerous buildings, Do you remember the beginningJ A 450-acre planta- tion for your boys to farm, and two small log cabins on a twelve and a half acre campus in the village of Pen field. You have not forgotten how Josiah Penfield left $2,500 for the education of pious young men for the gospel ministry, provided the Baptists of the state matched it. And they did match it, with Jesse Mercer and Billington Sanders leading the way; bur they didn't limit the pious young men to ministerial education. Billington McCarty Sanders arid Old Miss,” as his wife was affectionately known to the students, taught and cared for those 39 boys. Today your faculty and staff equals the total number of years of your life. Re- member what those two log cabins cost? Three hundred dollars! Your new Student Center cost students, alumni, and friends 3750,000. I