Born in Adversity: Founding of The Ohio State University

Setting the Curriculum

For much of the University’s first decade, the Board of Trustees and the faculty of the new college grappled with its mission. In the face of powerful lobbies and countervailing public sentiment, the Board established a liberal arts curriculum for the new college. Governor Rutherford B. Hayes pointed the Board to the Morrill Act’s flexible language, which encouraged colleges to promote agriculture and industry “without excluding other scientific and classical studies.” Board member Norton S. Townshend argued that the new college should teach “our farmers as farmers, and mechanics as mechanics.” Valentine Horton, president of the trustees, called such education Prussian, and Thomas Jones, of Ohio’s Eighth Congressional district, likewise spoke for teaching “the man as a man, and not as a machine.”

Original University Seal (1871)Apart from being an ideological exchange, the debate about the college’s character was practical. Expanding the curriculum beyond what an endowment could sustain had doomed other colleges. On their meeting of January 5, 1871, the Board authorized teaching in ten disciplines. Professorships in the disciplines literally mandated by the Morrill Act – agriculture and mechanic arts – as well as those in related fields – math, physics, chemistry, geology, zoology, botany – sparked no debate. Three proposed liberal departments – English language and literature; modern and ancient languages; political economy and polity – barely survived. Board of Trustees Secretary Joseph Sullivant was their ardent supporter: “Trained and educated minds ever have, and ever will take precedence over ignorance and limited knowledge, in all the affairs of life, and it is a mistaken notion that a narrow and technical education is all that is required of the industrial pursuits of men.” Sullivant’s seal for the new college placed “Letters” at the pinnacle of human endeavor, surmounted only by the lamp of knowledge.

At their meeting of January 2, 1873, the Board discussed filling six of the ten authorized departments, including one in English and one in Classics. Norton Townshend objected because he felt it was important to focus first on the other departments. A vote was called and English and Classics prevailed by one vote. Because of his knowledge and ardent support of agriculture, Townshend was appointed the first Professor of Agriculture.

Opening Day and the First Years

In one of the few newspaper accounts of the College’s opening day, the Columbus Dispatch summarized its birth: “They say a small beginning makes a good ending.” Forty students applied to be admitted to the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College when it opened its doors on September 17, 1873. Twenty-four of them, including two women, were accepted; collectively, the group hailed from eleven Ohio counties.

On opening day, Ohio A&M’s precarious circumstances were obvious: the roof of the College’s one building was incomplete, its doors were not hung, floors in lecture rooms remained to be laid. E. E. Corwin, then a preparatory student, later wrote, “the noise of the saw and plane of the carpenters, and the rattle of the plumber’s hammer were heard daily, if not hourly, for months after the opening of the school,” and Professor T.C. Mendenhall described the building sitting “in the midst of a muddy field, surrounded by the noise, dirt and confusion of the unwillingly departing workers.” Mendenhall gave his first lecture in physics by using his own lunch pail, strung from the ceiling by a long cord.

The College was formally dedicated in the Senate chamber of the Ohio Statehouse, January 8, 1874, with dignitaries in attendance. Addressing a crowd that included skeptics of public education for farm and factory children, President Edward Orton began by emphasizing the new college’s “industrial” and “practical” mandate. He closed with a resounding defense of liberal education, of the kind, “that imbues the mind with a generous sympathy for every department of knowledge […] rather than that which transforms its possessors into narrow and conceited specialists, mutually ignorant and intolerant of each other’s and of all others’ work and claims.”

In 1876, the College established a fixed curriculum for the first two years of schooling. This was both a foundation for further scholarship and a winnowing tool, as President Orton wrote, “eliminating slowly but surely those who are unable or unwilling to do the work which we ask.”  Even so, in 1877 the Board of Trustees eliminated the entrance requirement in algebra, over faculty objection.

State Support

The State of Ohio, which had created Ohio A&M, hesitated to support it. The legislature regarded the land-grant as a one-time payment, and disowned the necessity of perpetual care and stewardship of the fledgling institution. Since tuition was free, increasing enrollment increased expenses without increasing revenue. The College essentially ran on the funds given it by Franklin County during its first few years. Periodic infusions of cash by the legislature amounted to $50,000 over the University’s first eleven years, one-eighth what Illinois paid. The Board of Trustees appealed for state appropriations every year.  At times, Board Secretary Joseph Sullivant was reduced to ranting on the need for buildings, books and apparatus: “What of all this has the State of Ohio provided? Nothing!”

Renaming the College

On May 1, 1878, the state legislature officially renamed Ohio A&M The Ohio State University. President Orton had lobbied for a name change since 1875, arguing that the institution’s name should declare its dedication to “practical scientific training,” but felt the State’s rechristening amounted to wishful thinking. Still known to most Ohioans as “the Agricultural College,” OSU was far shy of being a University. It offered three degrees – Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Sciences, and Civil Engineer; students earned a degree upon completing two-years’ study in any six courses. Though it had grown rapidly in five years, it enrolled just 198 students.