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Page 28 text:
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O L D W ASHINGTON UNI VERSITY Edited by Arthur O’Neill In 1883 under circumstances which were rather unusual, Wayman Crow, Saint Louis merchant and state senator from his district, secured a charter for a “seminary of learning” to be called “Eliot Seminary.” Senator Crow seems to have been the sole author of the idea, charter, and name, and his sixteen corporators, who later proved themselves in entire accord with it, did not know that they had the responsibility until Mr. Crow came home from Jefferson City with the papers in his pocket. Saint Louis had long needed an institute of higher learning to complete its educational system. The action he took was very timely and fruitful. A full meeting of the corporation took place on February 22. 1854, exactly one year after the signing of the charter I he holdings of all seventeen of the men would hardly have totaled a half¬ million dollars, and yet with true pioneer spirit they assumed even greater responsibilities than the eager Senator Crow had cut out for them. At the suggestion of Doctor William G. Eliot, pastor of the church to which most of the corporators belonged, they removed the name “Eliot” and substituted the name“W ashington instead, because of the coincidence of the dateof the charter and corporators’ meeting have fallen on Washington’s birthday. The corporators elected Dr. Eliot president of their board of directors. Dr. Eliot had founded the public school system of Saint Louis and was curator of the State university. He realized that the men were taking a large assignment. But upon reading the account of the meeting more closely one sees that they humbly admitted that all they could do was to found a great institution. Its expansion must be left to a later gener¬ ation. Their current purpose was to establish an institution for the public benefit with stress on the idea of usefulness in its curriculum. With this purpose in view they opened the O’Fallon Poly¬ technic Institute, an evening school for artisans employed during the day. During the following years, as the full significance of the thing they were doing was impressed on them, they began to hope for a University. I hey had a growing school with a limitless charter in the largest and most influential city in the Mississippi alley. They held a very high opinion of both the city and the valley if one judges from the fervent after-dinner talks that were made. W as it not the verv thing to do to establish in this central place a University which should nourish A View of the old buildings at Seventeenth and St. Charles Page Eighteen
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Page 29 text:
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tlie higher culture of the future republic? They knew of the hardships of such an undertaking, but the opportunity to do something big lay before them and they grasped it. And so, in 1857, when a non-sectarian provision was put in the charter, the legislature chartered the institution as “Washington University” instead of “Eliot Seminary.” In the same year an inauguration ceremony was held, and an advanced scientific class was organized. A year later they set up the college proper under Chancellor Joseph G. Hoyt, and the first class graduated in 1862. It has been said of the first students to labor their way through the curriculum that very few were of high school grade. The school was really a seminary with the most extravagant intentions of living up to the name it had assumed. But it can be shown from the records of those first few graduates that their training more than made up for their lack of prepara¬ tion, and that the quality of the entrants was steadily improving. The alumni took leading positions in the community, so that the townspeople came to look upon the fledgling as a university in fact as well as in name. It was none too early for the university to get its footing, for the Civil War followed close after the inauguration ceremony. Every year counted under the leadership of Dr. Eliot, however, and in i860 his report showed that the college had gained prestige, being highly regarded by St. Louisans. He proposed the immediate creation of a permanent endowment fund. This was moderately successful, some 80,000 being subscribed at the start by Dr. Eliot and the board of directors. But it required hard work to secure outside subscriptions. All appointments of professors and instructors in 1861 were made conditional on “ the continued ability of the directors to conduct the institution as heretofore,” and there was a general reduction of expenses. All was carefully arranged to live out the lean years of the Civil War, W ashington University’s crucial period. In 1862 Chancellor Hoyt died and was succeeded in the fall of the same year by William Chauvenet, a man whose field was education and whose broad culture fitted him well for his position as leader of a humanistic institution. He had demonstrated his ability in developing the Naval Academy at Annapolis before he was called to Saint Louis. Like Chancellor Hoyt, he had little sympathy with poor scholarship, and he did much to set the high standards which have been so vigorously maintained. The year 1867 saw a law school organized, chiefly sponsored by Mr. Henry Hitchcock who iiL.d M The original buildings as seen from Seventeenth and Washington Page Nineteen
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