Chapter Thirty-One of the History of Southern Illinois

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

P. 376 ILLINOIS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE

A PART OF THE GENERAL SYSTEM—CREATED BY THE STATE—

SCHOOL OPENS IN 1866—UNCERTAINTY AS TO STATUS—

LIFE GOES OUT IN 1879

Morris Birkbeck, a prosperous farmer of England, migrated to Illinois in 1817. He landed at the present site of Albion, White county in that year. Here he purchased fourteen hundred acres of prairie land. He immediately opened a farm and began country life as if he had always lived in the “new west.” In conjunction with others he organized the Illinois Agricultural Society about 1821 or 1822. Mr. Birkbeck was the president of this society in the latter year. Professor Jonathan Turner was an enthusiastic successor to Mr. Birkbeck in the matter of scientific farming. Perhaps no man has done more to advance the cause of scientific agriculture than has Jonathan Turner.

A PART OF THE GENERAL SYSTEM

In 1833 there was held in Vandalia the first educational convention in the state, and from that date to 1855 there was a ceaseless effort to secure certain educational advantages for the youth of the state. The champions of these efforts were the Rev, John M. Peek, Prof. John Russell, Cyrus Edwards, John Goudy, Judge Sidney Breese and a host of other early pioneers. Gov. Duncan as early as 1834 urged upon the legislature the establishment of a State University, and in 1835 several charters were granted for the founding of colleges and seminaries.

There soon developed four lines along which the educational forces of the state seemed to exert themselves. These were: First, a public free school system; second, a training or normal school for the preparation of young people to teach; third, an agricultural school; fourth, a State University, The Normal school idea was agitated as early as 1840 by a paper published in Jacksonville. Agricultural papers were early printed in two or three sections of the state. The Prairie Farmer was a power for good in the early ‘40s. In 1852 The Industrial League of Illinois was formed in Chicago and was incorporated a year later. This league issued an address to the people of the state in 1852 in which they point out the need of a State University that shall provide for departments of instruction, as follows: First, Normal school department; second, a department of agriculture; third, a department of mechanics; fourth, a department of commerce and business.

This Industrial League was very active in urging the consideration of at least two of these lines of education. A bill to incorporate the P 377 “Illinois University” with Jonathan B. Turner, Bronson Murray, John B. Kennicott, Urial Mills, H. C. Johns, William A. Pennell as trustees was introduced into the legislature in 1855. The bill received favorable consideration in the senate but the time was too short to get the bill through the house, and the effort came to naught.

In all this agitation by the “Education Convention,” which was meeting annually, and the “Industrial League.” the literary phase of a state university was not very prominent. The method of support for these educational projects was the use of the college and seminary funds which had resulted from the sale of lands which had been donated by the general government.

In 1804 a land office was located in Kaskaskia. The secretary of the treasury was authorized to locate in the Kaskaskia land-office district a township of land to be given to the state of Illinois, when admitted into the union, for the purpose of founding a seminary of learning. In the enabling act another township was given for the same purpose. This made seventy-two sections—46,080 acres. In 1829 the state legislature authorized the sale of the college and seminary lands. The land was sacrificed usually at government prices, $1.25 per acre. The total amount sold up to 1855 was 42,300 acres which produced a fund of $59,832. This money was borrowed by the state from time to time and an interest rate of six per cent paid into the fund. This money is now enumerated as a portion of the permanent school fund.

There yet remained in 1861, 3,880 acres, or four and one-half sections of the seminary lands unsold. A portion of this remnant, if not all of it, was located in Iroquois county.

CREATED BY THE STATE

The effort of all the forces at work on the general school problem in Illinois resulted in the creation of the office of state superintendent of public instruction in 1854 and in the passage in 1855 of the act which formed the basis of our present free school system. In 1861 the legislature passed a law creating the “Illinois Agricultural College.” The enabling section reads: ‘‘Be it enacted by the people of the state of Illinois, represented in the General Assembly that J. W. Singleton, Thomas Quick, William A. Hacker, Walter Buchanan, B. C. Renois, Harmon Alexander, Curtis Blakeman, James H. Stipp and Zadock Casey, and all such other persons as may become associated with them, are hereby constituted a body corporate, by the name and style of the Illinois Agricultural College, for the purpose of instruction and science in practical and scientific agriculture, and in the mechanical arts.”

The capital stock was fixed at $50,000 with the privilege of increasing the sum to $200,000, divided into shares of one hundred dollars each, ten percent of the subscription to be paid in cash on each share at the time of issuing the stock. Arrangements in the charter provided for an opportunity for young men who were worthy and needy to have a chance to work in the fields a portion of each day and thus meet a portion of their expense.

Section 8 reads: “That the college and seminary lands of this state be and they are hereby donated to said corporation with power to lease, sell, dispose of and convey the same, and to receive and collect the money arising therefrom for the purpose of establishing, improving, and carrying P 378 on said college and farm.” The lands referred to in this 8th section of the charter were the remnant of the two townships granted by the general government for college and seminary purposes. There were four and one-half sections yet unsold. When the board of trustees was organized, it disposed of these four and one half sections for $58,000 and the money was deposited in the bank of Mr. A. D. Hay, of Centralia, who was treasurer of that institution.

When it came time for the trustees to locate the school, the activity of Mr. Thomas Quick secured the location of the college in the village of Irvington, the home of Mr. Quick located some five or six miles south of Centralia on the line of Illinois Central Railroad. Lands were purchased, buildings erected, and a corps of instructors secured.

There was some doubt whether this Illinois Industrial College was a state institution or whether it was a private corporation. In the same way there was some doubt whether the Normal school at Normal was a state school. The tenth section of the charter for the Illinois Industrial College seems to establish the fact that it is a state school. It reads:

“Said corporation shall make a full biennial report to the legislature when in session of their financial condition, their progress, the number of pupils received and discharged, stating the residence of each.”

The village of Irvington was a very small collection of houses, but the location was well selected as the land was rich and the physical conditions healthful.

SCHOOL OPENS IN 1866

Although the corporation was chartered in 1861, there had been much irritating delay in locating the school and in providing suitable buildings. However, the school opened on the 10th of September, 1866, with the following faculty: Rev. I. S. Mahan, president; Rev. James S. C. Finley, Valentine C. Rucker, Mrs. Helen Keeney, Peter Walser, Thomas Quick. The last named gentleman was the guiding genius in the board of trustees, and while the board had changed some since the charter was issued, Mr. Quick was still on the board and its president. Mr. Quick’s position on the faculty was as head of the department of law, when such a department should be organized.

Mr. Mahan remained but one year as head of the school, and upon the opening of the second year in September 1867, the Rev. D. P. French was the president. In 1871 the Rev. Mr. French was succeeded by the Rev. A. C. Hillman who served till 1874, when the Rev. D. W. Phillips was selected as president. He served till the death of the school some three years later.

The charter of the school made no provision for requiring a bond of the treasurer covering the funds which might come into his hands. The subscription to the stock was liberal and with this money a farm of five hundred and sixty acres was purchased lying adjacent to the Illinois Central railroad, immediately west of the village of Irvington. The money, some $58,000 for which the seminary lands were sold, was placed in the bank of Mr. Hay, which shortly failed, and the money was lost. In later years the legislature investigated the whole matter of the loss of the college and seminary funds in the hands of Mr. Hay, but no charges of intention to defraud the state could ever be sustained. It was believed that the income from the college and seminary fund together P 379

THE OLD ILLINOIS AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, IRVINGTON, WASHINGTON COUNTY

with tuition and the proceeds from the farm would be sufficient to sustain the school even if the legislature never appropriated anything for its support. But when the bank failed and the income from the college and seminary fund was shut off, the only source of support was tuition and the income from the farm, the state never having appropriated any money to the school’s maintenance.

UNCERTAINTY AS TO STATUS

The uncertainty as to whether the school was a “state school” is further shown by the act of the legislature in 1869, two years after the school was actually opened. It seems that the treasurer had failed to make any report to the auditor of public accounts of the proceeds of the sale of the four and one half sections of the college and seminary lands. He had repeatedly been asked to do so. On April 19, 1869, the legislature therefore passed an act entitled “An Act to Secure the Endowment Fund of the Illinois Agricultural College.” This provided that unless the treasurer of the said college make a full and complete report to the auditor of all the money, notes, interest or other things of value, as the proceeds of the sale of the four and one half sections of the college and seminary land, within three months, then the attorney general should take steps to secure the said amounts of money, etc.

Section 3 of this act is as follows: ‘‘It shall be lawful in case of the establishment of the Southern Illinois Normal University, for the said college to transfer and make over to the trustees thereof the said trust fund, upon such terms and conditions as may be agreed upon between the trustees of said college and said university, and which shall be approved by the governor, to be used only for purposes of endowment of said university.” There was a bill then before the legislature for the founding of a state normal school south of the St. Louis and Terre Haute Railroad, and it was the intention of this third section to transfer P 380 any money which could be recovered from the Illinois Agricultural College to this proposed normal school.

At some date prior to April 1878 the state entered suit against the trustees of the Illinois Agricultural College for the recovery of the college and seminary funds amounting to some $58,000, In the April term, 1878, of the circuit court in Washington county a decree was entered vesting the title to the “farm” of the Illinois Agricultural College in the state of Illinois, and on the 31st of May, 1879, the legislature passed an act authorizing the sale of the farm of five hundred and sixty acres. The act provided that when the land is sold the money shall be turned into the state treasury and that all liens and incumbrances on the “farm” shall be paid and that the residue shall be applied to educational purposes as may hereafter be provided by law.

There were several claims against the school probably amounting to several thousand dollars. When the lands were sold and all claims paid there remained the sum of nine thousand dollars which was turned into the endowment fund of the Southern Illinois Normal University.

The school was well attended from the different parts of the state. As many as from two to three hundred students were enrolled at one time and the entire school seemed to have the air of prosperity about it. There was a preparatory department which accommodated those students whose preliminary training had been too limited to enable them to enter the regular college courses.

A large boarding hall and dormitory was erected which was under the supervision of the wife of Dr. French. The demand for accommodations for students was difficult to supply in a village of only three hundred people, and so there were many houses erected in order to accommodate parents who wished to move to the village in order to school their children. These farmers and others would move away at the end of the school year and then the town consisted largely of tenantless houses.

LIFE GOES OUT IN 1879

The unfortunate loss of the funds from the college and seminary lands and the decree of the circuit court vesting the state with the “farm” were blows the school could not stand. The number of students decreased the teachers sought other fields, and the Illinois Agricultural College was a thing of the past. A Mr. Clark, a Presbyterian minister, occupied the college buildings and carried on a school of the academy grade for some time, and eventually this was abandoned. There was no longer any reason for the people’s remaining in the village, and college buildings and residences were left for the bats and owls.

In later years the main college building was used as a residence, and some five or six years ago the building and grounds were purchased by the trustees of the Huddleston Orphans’ Home, an institution under the auspices of the Baptist church.

History Table of Contents

Biography Table of Contents

Name Index

Memorial Library Illinois Selections

USGenNet.org - First & Only 501(c)3 Host for Genealogical & Historical Sites

Livingston County Michigan Historical & Genealogical Project

American History & Genealogy Project

Home

© 2006~ Pam MARDOS Rietsch pam@livgenmi.com