Ohio Northern University - Northern Yearbook (Ada, OH)

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SKETCH OF O.N. U. HISTORY DR. H. S. LEHR T HE decision to found a modern institution of learning was made by the founder in March, 1860 . He had just returned from teaching and was to re-enter college at Alliance. There was a forced sale of town lots. He believed there was an opportunity to make money. He devoted an entire day to meditation on the course of life he ought to pursue, whether to enter on a life of business or found a school entirely different from the then existing academies, seminaries, and colleges. ' Then there were no state universities as they now exist. Schools of higher learning were conducted but 36 weeks a year. Then West Union College had no literature in her curriculum. The founder well remembers a morning chapel lecture advising the students not to read the sinful trash written by Dickens, Scott, and like imps of Hell. It was all the work of the devil. It appeared to the founder that it was the aim of the colleges to prepare preachers to warn people to fear an angry God and avoid the fires of an eternal Hell and to manage the affairs of this world as best they could. He doubted their theology and believed that there should be schools of law, pharmacy, commerce, medicine, and engineering, and that they should continue the entire year, being so conducted that students could enter at any time and be accommodated. He had been successful in drawing many pay pupils to his village schools and in 1855 had already begun to write recommendations for his lady pupils to procure schools to teach. When but nineteen years old he was solicited to start an academy in Wayne County, later in Ashland County, and still later by fellow students in Uniontown, Pa. At the close of the civil war he engaged to teach in a small town near Springfield, Mo., but through the persuasion of his father he gave up his plan to start his cherished school in that state. He then taught another term in Stark County. During the winter of ’65 and ' 66, he carefully studied the educational situati on of Ohio and Indiana. Eastern Ohio was well supplied with academies, seminaries, and colleges, but in Northwestern Ohio there were but two colleges and one academy. There was a college at North- wood, Logan County, and an academy at Milan, Seneca County. The academy at Republic in Seneca County was closed during the war. There were no col¬ leges or academies in Northeastern Indiana. The founder of the O. N. U. had been successful thus far in his teaching and had unbounded faith in a school for the common people, that would con¬ tinue all year, and in which they could prepare for almost any calling in life, at the most moderate expense. He offered his services at a number of towns in Northwestern Ohio and Northeastern Indiana, and explained his plan of establishing a great university, promising to have an annual attendance of 5.000 students in twenty-five years. He met with poor encouragement nearly every¬ where. He finally visited Ada, then called Johnstown. Of the then three direc- 9

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Dr. H. S. Lehr, Founder O. N. V.

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Dr. L. G. Herbert Dr. A. S. Watkins Hon. Frank E. Willis N. W. Tobias Prof. B. S. Young