John Sargent Pillsbury's statue is a landmark on the U's Twin Cities Campus
The University celebrates a big birthday
The 1851 charter establishing the U
In 1851—seven years before Minnesota was admitted into the union as a state—the territorial legislature and Governor Alexander Ramsey chartered the U of M, established a board of regents, and chose a site for their creation just downstream from St. Anthony Falls.
From those humble origins—the U opened its doors that same year with an enrollment of 20 students—the University of Minnesota has grown into the one of the country’s top research and educational institutions with more than 50,000 students taking classes at five different campuses.
This summer marks the beginning of the U’s sesquicentennial, a year- long celebration of our 150th anniversary. The events kicked off June 11 in the picturesque southeast Minnesota town of Lanesboro with an Opera on the Farm performance of Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land. Other big events are planned throughout 2000–01, with an official 150th birthday party scheduled for February 2001.
Meanwhile, part of the sesquicentennial fun is discovering some of the University’s rich and colorful early history. Here are just a few stories from the earliest years, drawn from James Gray’s definitive book, The University of Minnesota: 1851-1951 and other sources. If you want more, check out the sesquicentennial Web site, a work still in progress, at www.umn.edu/sesqui.
Founding charter In February 1851, when the legislature created the University, Minnesota was still a territory with a population of fewer than 10,000 pioneers. All but a small eastern triangle of its lands still belonged to the Indians. Statehood was seven years away.
Alexander Ramsey, in his second message as territorial governor, urged the creation of a university and recommended to the territorial legislature that it ask Congress for a grant of 100,000 acres of public land as an endowment. Henry Sibley, in Washington, D.C., was already acting to get a congressional bill for a university land grant.
The territorial legislature drafted a charter for the University, passed and signed by the governor Feb. 25, 1851. Government was vested in a board of regents elected by thelegislature. Six years later the charter was given enduring validity by the state constitution.
School begins In the earliest years, the university-to-be was a preparatory school. School began November 26, 1851, with an enrollment of 20 pupils. Tuition was $4, $5, or $6 a quarter, depending on the curriculum. The Reverend Elijah Merrill was hired to teach all subjects.
Financial troubles forced the school to close, until it was reorganized in 1868. When William Watts Folwell became president in 1869, he found only 18 students at the collegiate level and just over 200 in the preparatory department. Over time the preparatory school was phased out.
Old Main The University’s first permanent building, Old Main, was erected in 1858 in the area now known as the knoll.
Six months after Old Main opened in 1858, hard economic times after the Panic of 1857 and the impending Civil War forced the school to close. Old Main became a refuge for squatters. A legislative committee that visited the building found a family living in it. The family became surly at having their privacy invaded. Turkeys were in one room, hay in another, and wood-splitting had ruined the floor in the central hall.
Old Main, the U's first permanent building, burned to the ground in 1904
In 1867 the legislature voted $15,000 to repair the building and begin instruction in it. The governor signed this act, reorganizing the University, in February 1868.
Old Main was destroyed by fire Sept. 24, 1904. A plaque in front of Shevlin Hall on Pillsbury Drive marks the site of Old Main’s front door.
John Sargent Pillsbury A hardware merchant who was owed money by the University for locks and nails in the construction of Old Main, John Sargent Pillsbury became the school’s first major benefactor and its rescuer. He came to be known as "the father of the University."
First U graduates Warren Clark Eustis and Henry Martin Williamson
Pillsbury was ready to sue the regents to collect his debts. Instead, he became one of them, and he took on the mission of keeping the University alive. In 1863 he was elected state senator and in 1876 governor.
Under Pillsbury’s leadership, the regents freed the school from its burdensome debts through private donations (including Pillsbury’s own), land sales, and skillful negotiations with creditors. In 1867 Pillsbury had the satisfaction of reporting to the legislature, "Gentlemen, the last claim against the University has been paid…the University’s slate is clean."
With his growing political stature, Pillsbury persuaded the legislature to pass the University Reorganization Act in 1868, assuring that the fledgling University received the 1862 federal Morrill Land-Grant Act endowment and making it possible to reopen the school.
The Morrill Act The Morrill Act, or Land-Grant Bill, began as the project of Justin Morrill, a representative in Congress from Vermont, who proposed to donate a large acreage in public lands for the support of colleges to teach "such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts."
When Congress first passed it in 1859, the Morrill bill was promptly vetoed as unconstitutional by President James Buchanan. But Morrill introduced his bill again and again, and it became law in 1862.
Its final terms gave each state 30,000 acres of land for each member of its delegation to Congress. Minnesota, with two senators and two representatives, was entitled to receive 120,000 acres. "It was not until 1867 that all red tape had been finally unwound and the state auditor was given title to the lands," says historian James Gray.
The land was given to the states for investment, not as the land on which campuses would be built. The Morrill Act calls for the money to be invested as a perpetual fund.
William Watts Folwell William Watts Folwell was just 36, and a Civil War veteran, when he became the University’s first president.
Students called him Uncle Billy. One example of his concern for students is that he said it was the "duty of the institution to make it possible for a young person to live on $3 a week." Then he walked door to door with students, asking the residents of neighboring houses to take in student boarders for a small fee.
An educational visionary, Folwell spelled out a "Minnesota Plan" for education in his inaugural address Dec. 22, 1869. If he had been able to implement it, he would have put the University far ahead of its time, but he ran into opposition from regents and faculty. Many of his ideas are fundamental to a university today.
When Folwell resigned as president in 1883, the regents made him professor of political science and put him in charge of the library. In 1907 he retired to begin writing a comprehensive four-volume history of Minnesota.
Maria Sanford Maria Sanford came to the University in 1880, when the school had 300 students and 18 professors. She was the first woman professor, hired by President Folwell after a conversation that lasted just 30 minutes.
"The greatest thing I ever did for the University was to bring Maria Sanford here," Folwell said.
She taught composition, rhetoric, elocution, and oratory, packing lecture halls with young scholars enthusiastic about her innovative teaching style. Once after she heard a former student speak in public as a candidate for mayor, she rose earlier than usual the next day to hurry to his office and point out a mistake in grammar that had slipped into his speech.
She often welcomed students into her home, just minutes from campus, sometimes housing up to 16 students at a time. Generations of students called her "the best loved woman in Minnesota." A Minneapolis public school was named after her, as was Sanford Hall, the University’s first residence hall, built on University Ave. in 1910.
The University celebrated her 80th birthday as it has celebrated few events of its history. President George Vincent called her the "retired professor who has never found out that she was retired." Oscar Firkins read a poem ending, "Shout ‘Maria’ to the Skies.’"
Maria Sanford, the first woman professor at the U
Cyrus Northrop Cyrus Northrop, the University’s second president and the one who served longest—for 27 years, from 1884 to 1911—was initially reluctant to come to Minnesota. He said his salary would have to equal what he made as professor of rhetoric and English literature at Yale and as collector of the port of New Haven, Connecticut.
John Sargent Pillsbury decided to dig deep. "We have had to offer Northrop $6,000 a year to come," he wrote, half apologetically. The salary was nearly twice what any other president of a midwestern university commanded. The choice turned out to be a popular one, and Northrop won the hearts of students, faculty, and people of the state.
"Never was a president more loved and revered by a student body," E.B. Pierce wrote in Minnesota Alumnus in 1946. Northrop was called Prexy, and on days when he led chapel students came en masse. The original version of "Hail, Minnesota!" had as its second stanza a tribute to Northrop: "Hail to thee, our Prexy, sire. Thou has made us all thine own. And our hearts one boon aspire, That our love may be thy throne."
During the years of his presidency, enrollment increased from 289 to more than 4,800. The legend was the Northrop knew each student by name. The faculty grew from 23 to 330. Colleges and schools increased from two to eleven.
Several times after he reached the age of 65, Northrop tried to resign, but the regents refused. Nobody could imagine the University without Prexy Northrop. Finally at age 77 he insisted, and the regents released him.
—Maureen Smith
After the June 11 opening in Lanesboro, other sesquicentennial events are planned throughout 2000–01.
University of Minnesota Day at the State Fair will be Aug. 27. The University of Minnesota, Morris, will celebrate its 40th birthday throughout 2000–01 and plans
special events for homecoming
Oct. 6–8. The University of Minnesota, Duluth, will celebrate the sesquicentennial with History Day Oct. 7. The University of Minnesota Crookston will hold an historical convocation Oct. 18. A sesquicentennial theme is planned for the half-time show at the Gopher homecoming game on the Twin Cities campus Oct. 28.
The official birthday week Feb. 19–25 will include a birthday party at the capitol Feb. 21 and a Martin Luther King Day concert Feb. 25. A grand finale event in Northrop Auditorium, followed with a fireworks display on the banks of the Mississippi, will close the celebratory year.
—M.S.