university must come before the gymnasium." From the State University and similar institutions the people received the educational life and sentiment which made free schools possible.

The settled parts of Indiana, at the time of its admission as a State, were confined to a narrow fringe of territory extending down the Ohio border from Fort Wayne to the Ohio River, down that stream to the Wabash, and up the Wabash to Vincennes. A great part of southern Indiana, nearly all of central, and all of northern Indiana was a wilderness. The voting population was 12,112, the total white population was 63,837. Schools were few and far between. There were no public funds, no public schoolhouses, and but few teachers; and the teachers who had wandered from the East or South into this wilderness were usually ill qualified for service. Monroe County, the future seat of the "Seminary," was then a part of Orange County, and was not laid off as a separate county until 1818. But few inhabitants had reached a point so far north in the migration from the southeast. The northern part of the county was the southern limit of what was known as the "new purchase," which embraced the central and northern parts of the State, and part of Illinois.

"By a treaty made with the Delawares and some other Indians in the fall of 1818, the southern Indiana boundary line was set back well up toward the sources of the Wabash River, and two years thereafter the door to all central Indiana, then and long after known as the 'new purchase,' was thrown open to an anxious throng of hardy pioneer home-hunters. Before the Indians had ceased to occupy the new purchase, the advance guard of white settlers began to invade it, and by the fall of 1820 the sound of the pioneer's axe was heard in every county watered by the White River from the Forks' to its sources. The immigrants came by way of the Indian trails or cut through the woods. Some came in wagons and some in sleds. Many packed in on horseback and a few came on foot. In 1820 the census showed a population of a little more than 147,000 as against 64,000 of five years before, and by 1825 it had mounted up to a quarter of a million.”1

On January 20, 1820, as soon as the four years during which the Constitution required the lands to be withheld from sale had expired, the general assembly in session at Corydon established a "State Seminary" at Bloomington. Governor Jennings, in his message to the assembly,

had said:

"The Constitution has made it the duty of the general assembly, as soon as circumstances will permit, to provide by law for a general system of education. The lands received for the use of the seminary of learning are vested in the legislature, to be appropriated solely for that purpose, and it is submitted to your consideration whether the location of such an institution upon, or near, such lands, would not greatly enhance their value and enlarge the funds for a purpose so important.

'D. D. Banta: "Seminary Period of the University."

It is believed that the Seminary Township, situated in Monroe County, would afford a site combining the advantages of fertility of soil with a healthy climate, as well as a position sufficiently central to the various sections of the State. To authorize the sale of a portion of these lands under judicious regulations would increase the value of the residue, and the sooner enable us to lay the foundations of an institution so desirable."

This part of the message was on the 11th of December referred by the house of representatives to a committee of seven, of which Mr. Ross of Clark County was chairman, with leave to report by bill or otherwise. On the 31st of December, twenty days after the reference, Mr. Ross, on behalf of his committee, reported a bill to establish a seminary, which, after two readings, was referred to a committee of the whole house and was made a special order for the following day. But upon the next day and for several days following, various matters of local interest to the members absorbed their attention. But on the 11th of January the bill was taken up by the house, and passed with "sundry amendments."

Four days later the bill was passed in the senate with some amendments thereto, one of which was to vest in the trustees of the State Seminary the seminary lands in Gibson County, and the other was to strike from the bill the following: "Provided, That 2,000 acres of land in Monroe County vested in the trustees be forever reserved by said trustees as a glebe for the said seminary and the use of the professors thereof." Finally, the bill was passed only by the casting vote of Lieut. Gov. Ratliffe Boon, the presiding officer of the senate. The house concurred in some of the amendments of the senate and rejected others, and upon the return of the bill to the senate it came to its final passage on January 20, 1820. This, then, may be said to be the day of the founding of Indiana Seminary, which subsequently developed into Indiana University.

The first section of this act named for the trustees of the new seminary Charles Dewey, Jonathan Lindley, David H. Maxwell, John M. Jenkins, Jonathan Nichols, and William Lowe, they and their successors in office to have perpetual succession. They were authorized to meet in Bloomington on the first Monday of the following June and select "an eligible and convenient site for the seminary." It was made their duty to appoint an agent to lay off and sell lands not exceeding 640 acres near Bloomington, the seat of the seminary. As soon as the trustees should deem it expedient they were to "proceed to the erection of a suitable building for a State seminary, and also a suitable and commodious house for a professor." They were to report to the next general assembly their proceedings, together with a plan of buildings by them erected. In their report to the next legislature the trustees say:

"The site chosen is almost one-quarter of a mile due south from Bloomington, on a beautiful eminence and convenient to an excellent spring of water, the only one on the section selected that could with convenience answer the purposes of a seminary."

At this time the population of Bloomington did not exceed 300 souls. Migration was first directed to this county by the location there of the new Seminary Township by President Monroe. Among those who came on this account was Dr. David H. Maxwell, of Madison, Jefferson County. He came to Monroe County in 1819. Dr. Maxwell was full of energy and zeal in behalf of education. He went to the State capital at Corydon to use his influence with members of the legislature for the purpose of securing the location of the proposed "State Seminary" at Bloomington. With several of the members of this assembly Dr. Maxwell had served in the Constitutional Convention of 1816. It was chiefly through his influence that a site so far north was chosen for the seminary. Dr. Maxwell was immediately made a member of the first board of trustees, a position which he occupied with but little intermission throughout his life. During the seminary period, while the institution was struggling for establishment, from 1820 to 1825 especially, he was not only the presiding officer of the board, but was also its ex. ecutive officer and corresponding secretary, having the erection of new buildings under his supervision, carrying on a heavy correspondence with prominent men throughout the State in behalf of the institution, while having to contend with a disaffected element at home. Solely on behalf of the seminary he solicited election to the legislature, and from 1821 to 1826 he was a member either of the lower house (where he was once Speaker) or of the senate, and at all times he was especially interested in watching jealously the affairs of the new seminary. In the establishment of institutions it seems that the life and services of some one man are paramount and essential. In the establishment of the Indiana Seminary Dr. David H. Maxwell was the essential man.

The legislature in 1825 authorized the election by the board of a principal and professor of languages, and on May 1 of that year the institution was opened to the public. Prof. Baynard R. Hall was the first teacher, and for the first few years he was the "faculty" of the seminary. He was a man of excellent classical attainments, and while the general assembly of the State was legislating the seminary into existence he was finishing his course at Union College under the tuition of the celebrated Dr. Nott. In his book, entitled "The New Purchase, or Seven and a Half Years in the Far West," he gives a vivid idea of the primitive habits of the time. This new school was a State Seminary, therefore it belonged to the "people;" instruction was to be "free" in all branches, including the most elementary. The consequence was a perfect stampede from the private schools of the town, and the principal was under the necessity of sending the pupils back to their schools. In sifting the applicants only ten were found qual

ified for entrance. As the warm weather approached, the "ten boys and young gentlemen" came to recitations without coats, and "as the thermometer arose, they came without shoes." After the manner of the time, the judge on the bench sat in court" without coat and cravat, with his feet modestly reposed on the upper rostrum, showing his boot soles to the bystanders and lawyers." The lawyers were in their shirt sleeves and the Governor of the State, when he appeared on the "stump," had the same careless dress and manner. In the election of the second teacher, the "people" proposed to have a voice. A mass meeting, with a local politician in front as spokesman, marched to where the Board of Trustees were in session and made known their demands. But the trustees, who had received intimation of their coming, speedily determined the election, whereupon the opposers, moved partly by sectarian motives, and partly by the spirit of pure democracy, carried their complaint to the State legislature. They objected to a "foreigner" in their college, though the accepted candidate was recognized as a scholarly gentleman, the best qualified of all the applicants, and lived no farther away than the neighboring State of Kentucky. But it was suspected by the men who opposed his election that he "smelled of Presbyterianism."

From such things we have some idea of the social conditions during the first years of the "State Seminary" and "college." Prof. John H. Harney, at whose election this episode occurred, was made "professor of mathematics and natural and mechanical philosophy and chemistry," and was the second teacher employed in the institution. These two professors were allowed a salary at first of $250 each, which was soon afterwards increased to $400, with fees which might increase it to $650. The fees of the students were $10 per year, and when the trustees raised this to $15, the opponents of the college, always ready for an occasion to arouse opposition, complained that "poor persons" were thus debarred from the privileges of the institution. It will be seen that it was not an easy task to maintain a "State Seminary" in pioneer Indiana, in those early years of her history.

During the year of the election of the second professor some of the opponents of the seminary sent a protest to the legislature against what they alleged as the extravagant and careless and sectarian management of the institution. A resolution of the house of representa tives called out a report on the work and condition of the seminary from Dr. Maxwell, who was at all times watchful of its interests. From that report we learn that 13 students attended the seminary the first year, 15 the second, and 21 the third. Professor Hall's salary of $250 as originally fixed was continued at that sum for 3 years, during which he "preached to the Presbyterian church of Bloomington, for which service they paid him $150 in articles of trade." At the end of the 31 years the trustees forbade the preaching and advanced his salary to

It was resolved by the board some time during the second year "that in addition to the Greek and Latin languages heretofore taught in the State Seminary there shall be taught by the said Hall English Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Geography, Moral and Natural Philosophy, and Euclid's Elements of Geometry;" but for reasons unassigned the requirements were not complied with, for Dr. Maxwell's report asserts that "during the first three years one teacher only was employed by the trustees, and the Greek and Latin languages alone were taught during that time." Dr. Maxwell was showing, in defence of the institution, that the trustees had exercised due economy in its management. So great was the jealousy of the time against extravagant expenditures! For the three years from 1824 to 1827 Baynard R. Hall was the sole professor in the Indiana Seminary. No catalogues were printed during this period, and the trustees' records were subsequently destroyed by fire, so the history of the time is limited.

On January 26, 1827, provision was made by the legislature for a board of visitors to the "State Seminary." These "visitors" were to visit the school, inspect its workings, and report to the general assembly "any recommendations they may think proper, of such measure within the competency of the legislature as may tend to sustain, foster, and improve the seminary aforesaid." James B. Ray, Governor of the State, and James Scott, a judge of the supreme court, were members of the board of visitors. The law required of the visiting board that they examine each student in all the branches he had pursued, and after the oral examinations had been gone through with, one of the board was to make a speech to the boys. The law seems to have been observed, and the "visitors" went away pleased with the conduct of the school. The Governor made his report through his annual message; Judge Scott wrote a report for the board of visitors, and Dr. Maxwell fol lowed with a report as the president of the board of trustees. All agreed that the time had come when the Indiana Seminary should be raised to the dignity of a college. By the act of the assembly of Jannary 24, 1828, the "Indiana Seminary" was merged in the "Indiana College."