St Josephs College - Phase Yearbook (Rensselaer, IN)

Page 14 text:

Students of the old St. Joseph's UPINWETHEHEBEGINNINGM Dawn breaking across the countryside south of Rensselaer in 1868 revealed only a rude frame dwell- ing, the home of thirty-five orphans. Nineteen years Q X later the home was closed. In 1887 the Catholic In- ' ry X dian Bureau erected an Indian School, now remodeled N into Drexel Hall, and persuaded the Precious Blood Kg M Fathers to take charge. This St. Joseph's Indian Nor- ' . mal School continued for nine years, when Govern- ment support was withdrawn. .. , M , LM In 1889 Bishop Dwenger of Fort Wayne offered Father Henry Drees, then Provincial of the Sanguinist Fathers, this tract of land, stipulating that a college be founded there. During the same year St. Joseph's College was incorporated under Indiana laws. With the coming of summer, 1891, the first building, now the south part of the Administration Building, was finished. Two years later contractors extended the structure to its present proportions. Brother Victor Zuber arrived and set about planting the present towering trees of Collegeville. ss .M 44. St. Joseph's became Collegeville when the post oflice was begun in 1893, followed a year later by the graduation of Edward T. Mug, of Lafayette, a three-year commerce student. In May of 1894 occurred the first Military Day, a series of drills by the Seifert Light Guards. This battalion, with the Columbian Literary Society, were the first student organizations. Twelve students graduated during the first formal commencement, 1896. Enrollment during the Hrst decade hung evenly near the hundred mark. In 1897, present quarters were found limited, a situation which paved the way for the construction of Gaspar Hall. Indian Normal School are shown at the right with Father Andrew Gietl, their supervisor. Although more adept at chas- ing rabbits and staging war dances on the prairie, a number of these Indian boys sang in the choir at the dedication of the col- lege in 1891. Kiki Rijinson, now an eighty-year-old resident of Jasper County, studied in the old Indian Normal School.

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LL 76' Q Q G 5 5 Reminiscences are perhaps the great- est boon of man. And there is a time- honored story, the hearing of which St. Joseph's men never tire. These are the legends surrounding the early years of Alma Mater. Within the shadow of Collegeville's twin towers lies a stirring tale. The placid ripple of the lake is a direct para- dox of the epochal days and nights that have begun and ended here. Once there was a time when no Ad Building spire reached out to grasp the sky. This was fifty years ago. In the fol- lowing pages, then, Phase presents the biography of St. Joseph's College, dec- ade by decade. Hardly a simple story of brick and mortar, this is a narrative of life itself. 1 L X X K l 4 fa J -JT!

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The above photograph shows St. Joseph's College in 1891. Note the proximity of the barn to the build- ing in the left background. Trees seem to have grown rampant, while the pond was anything but the beauty spot it is today. To observers it was more familiarly the habitat of bull frogs and other marine life, except when wander- ing livestock wallowed contentedly in the cool mire. During the early days, according to alumni who remember, there was never more than the single row- boat shown above. This quite logically meant that not all of the early St. Joe boys could be Volga boatmen at once. Missing connections between shore and skiff got to be a common occurrence. During the summer prior to the first opening of the college, Father Anthony Dick was in charge. His sphere was limited in large part to the overseeing of workmen shown with him at the left. These men completed the first edifice in 1891. Dimensions reveal that the first building was 135 feet long, fifty-five feet wide, and eighty- eight feet high with a tower 115 feet above the ground. This sec- tion was added to in 1893 to complete the present Administra- tion Building.