Westminster College - Blue Jay Yearbook (Fulton, MO)

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1 4 l 1 I f Z- -X 1:1151 ms L: 1 cu,xP1zL XVIZSTMINSTER HALL mcumox HALL SCIENCE HALL

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,M l. LL: .,, f i rl lf in , N!! ,, ll r 4, ily 25-S:-Ewa , . 1, fl w ll 2 E l l v 1 1 1 4 Nl l i 53 ll V V E from home, and when he remembered that England could be lost in Texas, while this a country of magnificent distances. Perhaps this reason, added to others above indicated, accounts for the fact that the trend of popular favor is now toward the small colleges which, a few years ago, were threatened with ex- tinction. In closing, it may be well to remind the reader of what the late Dr. Gray, then editor of the Chzkzzgo Ifzierioff, prophesied on that subject: H It i.: said, 'The little colleges must go.' Well, if they ever go, which God forbid, they will take the brains and the consecration of the country along with them. They have furnished nearly the whole of it, up to date, and they are going right along at the same ratio. They are not going any more than the churches or homes are going? By way of fuliillment of that prophecy, let us quote Andrew Carnegie, who in March said: H I think a young man who goes to a small college receives a better education than at a larger one. Sport is too generally taking the place of valuable knowledge at the big collegefl J. J. R. .Iva-wx N l 12 ,

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? Viv - v K , if 1, Westminster During the Civil War. that did not close during the civil war. Wlien the war began a few of the students left to join the army, but their leaving did not interfere with college work. The only time lost by the school during the war was in the fall of 1861, when the opening of school was delayed until December because four of the five mem- bers ofthe faculty had resigned and instructors to take their places could not be secured earlier. Dr. Laws, who resigned the presi- dency of the college in J une, 1861, and a number of the board of trustees thought it advisable to close the institution until after . ESTMINSTER is the only college in Missouri outside of St. Louis six s M f ' N War should subside, and that their suggestion was not adopted cannot be better explained now than by saying that Westminster was not born to die. Attendance at the college was increased during the war, the number of stu- dents running close to two hundred, and being greater than at any other time in its history. The law that forbade drafting students into the army had something to do with increasing the attendance, for it is stated authoritatively that a num- ber of men well advanced toward thirty years of age were in school simply be- cause it protected them from military service. Though the country was involved in civil war, the only times that the full senior honors of the college--valedictory, Greek salutatory, and Latin salutatory--have been conferred was in 1861 and 1864, which indicates, as well, perhaps, as anything else could that the affairs of the college were kept well in hand during that time. Fulton during the war was a town of perhaps a thousand population, the greater part of which lived south of what is now known as Fifth or Asylum street. The northern portion of the present Fulton was largely vacant land. Some of it was i11 it - woods, and other parts of it were used as farm- ing lands. ' Students coming to college from a dis- tance came by the way of St. Aubert Know Mokanel and Mexico, taking the stage-coach at those places to complete their journey to Fulton. Those coming by way of St. Aubert reached that point by boat on the Missouri river, and those coming from Mexico generally used the old North Missouri Railroad Know the Wabashl, which had been completed then as far west as Mexico The college was eight years old at the beginning of the war Of the build OLD WESTMIYSTER HALL 14 ,