The school, founded in 1856 by Baptist church leaders, was called the "University of Chicago" (or, interchangeably, "Chicago University"). After years of financial struggle, the university's campus was badly damaged by fire, the school was foreclosed on by its creditors, its classes ceased in 1886, and it no longer admitted students. Rather than try to continue operations, its trustees decided in 1890 to change the school's name to the "Old University of Chicago" and allow the establishment of a new "University of Chicago".[2]
The Northwestern University School of Law began as a department of the Old University of Chicago and transferred completely to Northwestern when Old UC folded. The Baptist Theological Union had formed a separate theological school in 1865 that would later be grafted into the new University as the University of Chicago Divinity School. While the present-day University of Chicago, which was established in 1891, is a separate legal entity and in a different location, it recognized Old University of Chicago alumni as its own and maintained a number of other continuities from its pre-1890 origins.[3]
The land upon which the Old University of Chicago was established was originally part of a lakefront tract owned by Senator Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas had offered the 10-acre (4.0ha) plot, worth $50,000 and located at Cottage Grove Avenue and Thirty-Fifth Street, to the Presbyterian Church for a seminary. When the church group failed to raise the $100,000 Douglas set as a precondition of his donation, he offered the site to a group of Baptists, who accepted. Douglas was not particularly religious but an avid promoter of Chicago; critics accused him of trying to boost the value of his adjoining lots.[4]
The school's 1856 charter required that most of the members of the board of trustees be of the Baptist faith. The school made no such restrictions on either faculty or students. Despite the title of university, in the early years, the tenor of the instruction was primarily collegiate and vocational in nature. Two hundred to five hundred students enrolled annually in preparatory, collegiate, law, and medical schools.
The new institution began almost immediately to encounter financial difficulties. Fundraising was hurt by Douglas' support for the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which was regarded by many northern Baptists and other abolitionists as a betrayal,[5] while the financial Panic of 1857 drained the finances of many of the principal investors, rendering most of their initial subscriptions worthless.
The trustees proceeded with plans to build the university, including construction projects that were beyond the school's means because of the volatility of the market. With the university's debt mounting rapidly, President John C. Burroughs and the trustees sold a second wave of subscriptions. Key to this effort was James Hutchinson Woodworth, a former Chicago mayor who was also president of the Treasury Bank of Chicago. Woodworth served as a university trustee from 1857 to 1869, as well as treasurer for some time.
Burroughs, who remained in office longer than any of his five successors, established in 1859 the university's Law Department, the city's first law school. In 1870, Ada Kepley and Richard A. Dawson received bachelor of law degrees, likely the first woman and first African American, respectively, to receive degrees from the institution. In 1872, the faculty voted to allow the awarding of degrees to women undergraduate students.[6]Alice Robinson Boise Wood became the first woman to graduate from the university with a B.A. in Classics in 1872. In 1873, the Law School became jointly associated with Northwestern University, as the Union College of Law and when the Old University of Chicago folded, today's Northwestern University School of Law.[7] Baptist ministers and lay leaders had gathered in 1856 to organize a university for collegiate and theological education, and Baptists again gathered in 1863 as a separate Baptist Theological Union when theological instruction had not been addressed in the university, forming the Baptist Theological Union Seminary, which existed from 1867 to 1877 alongside the university. In 1877 the seminary moved to Morgan Park, IL. In the 1890s, this seminary became the University of Chicago Divinity School.[8]
The university's finances deteriorated rapidly after Woodworth died in 1869. It was rocked by the huge costs of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and the Panic of 1873 decreased donations. In 1874, a fire damaged the university's main physical plant.
Meanwhile, disagreements in the board of trustees flared up over fundraising, financial management, and faculty appointments, escalating into open conflict. Burroughs and his most vocal opponent, trustee W. W. Everts, left the board. To keep Burroughs affiliated with the university, the trustees created the post of chancellor and appointed him responsible for the school's financial affairs. But the new president and Chancellor Burroughs were quickly at odds. Other administrators were hired and departed in rapid succession; by 1886, six presidents had served the university.
The university's fifth president, Galusha Anderson, appealed to philanthropists John D. Rockefeller and Leland Stanford, but was unable to secure substantial donations.[9]Union Mutual Life Insurance Company, the university's chief creditor, brought suit in 1881 to foreclose the mortgage on the university's property. Anderson argued to keep the school open, but in January 1885 the court found for Union Mutual.[9] The university closed in autumn 1886, and the main building was razed in 1890.[10]
At the final meeting of its board of trustees in 1890, the group officially changed the name of the institution to the Old University of Chicago. This was to enable a new Rockefeller-financed Baptist school, then being organized, to have a completely separate legal entity and take the title of the University of Chicago.
A stone from the old school's building in Bronzeville, which was destroyed by fire, was preserved on the present school's main quadrangle, where it was set into the wall of the arch between the Classics building and Wieboldt Hall. The stone was removed from the wall and archived by the university in July 2020 in response to concerns regarding the old Douglas Hall benefactor's association with slavery.
Notable graduates
Richard A. Dawson, second African American to be admitted to the practice of law in Illinois, and Arkansas state senator.[11]
The Baptist Union of Norway is a Baptist Christian denomination in Norway. It is affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance. The headquarters is in Stabekk.
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (UTS) is a private ecumenical Christian liberal seminary in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, affiliated in Columbia University. Since 1928, the seminary has served as Columbia's constituent faculty of theology. In 1964, UTS also established an affiliation with the neighboring Jewish Theological Seminary of America. UTS confers the following degrees: Master of Divinity (MDiv), Master of Divinity & Social Work dual degree (MDSW), Master of Arts in religion (MAR), Master of Arts in Social Justice (MASJ), Master of Sacred Theology (STM), and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD).
James Hutchinson Woodworth, was a member of the Illinois State Senate and the Illinois State House of Representatives, served as a Chicago Alderman, was elected to consecutive terms as Mayor of Chicago, Illinois (1848–1850) as an Independent Democrat, and served one term in the US House of Representatives as a member of the Republican Party. Woodworth completed his career in Chicago as one of the city's most noteworthy bankers. He is a member of the Woodworth political family.
Edgar Johnson Goodspeed was an American theologian and scholar of Greek and the New Testament, and Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor of the University of Chicago until his retirement. He taught for many years at the University of Chicago, whose collection of New Testament manuscripts he enriched by his searches. The University's collection is now named in his honor.
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Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary (Garrett) is a private seminary and graduate school of theology related to the United Methodist Church and is ecumenical in spirit. It is located in Evanston, Illinois, on the campus of Northwestern University. The seminary offers master's- and doctoral-level degrees, as well as certificate, micro-credentialing, and lifelong learning programs. It has thousands of alumni serving in ministry, education, organizational leadership, and public service throughout the world.
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Ada Harriet Miser Kepley was the first American woman to graduate from law school. She graduated in 1870 with a law degree, from what is today Northwestern University School of Law. At that time, she was prohibited from legal practice by state court rule that denied women admittance to the bar. She finally was admitted to the bar in 1881, but did not practice. She was an advocate for women's suffrage and temperance.
The University of Chicago Divinity School is a private graduate institution at the University of Chicago dedicated to the training of academics and clergy across religious boundaries. Formed under Baptist auspices, the school today lacks any sectarian affiliations.
William Weston Patton, was an abolitionist, academic administrator, and scholar. He served as the fifth president of Howard University, and one of the contributors to the words of "John Brown's Body". He was the son of Rev. William Patton and the grandson of Anglo-Irish Congregationalist immigrant and Revolutionary War soldier Major Robert Patton.
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) is a Baptist theological institute in Louisville, Kentucky. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The seminary was founded in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina, where it was at first housed on the campus of Furman University. The seminary has been an innovator in theological education, establishing one of the first Ph.D. programs in religion in the year 1892. After being closed during the Civil War, it moved in 1877 to a newly built campus in downtown Louisville and moved to its current location in 1926 in the Crescent Hill neighborhood. In 1953, Southern became one of the few seminaries to offer a full, accredited degree course in church music. For more than fifty years Southern has been one of the world's largest theological seminaries, with an FTE enrollment of over 3,300 students in 2015.
Joseph Cummings was an American academic who served as the 5th president of Wesleyan University from 1857 to 1875, the 5th president of Northwestern University from 1881 to 1890, and the president of Genesee College from 1854 to 1857.
The University of Chicago was an entirely new university founded in 1891, using the same name as a defunct school founded in the 1850s which closed in 1886. See Old University of Chicago. Supporters of a new university raised money, selected a new campus in Hyde Park, and opened its doors in 1890. Most of the original financing came from oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, and the American Baptist Education Society The new university had a dynamic young president William Rainey Harper. Classes began in 1892. The goal ever since then has been to build a world-class university covering all fields of study with an emphasis on advanced research and scholarship.
John Merlin Powis Smith was an English-born, American orientalist and biblical scholar.
John Charles Burroughs was an American educator from New York. A graduate of Yale University, Burroughs was the first President of the Old University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, serving from 1859 to 1873. He then served as the school's chancellor until 1877. He was later Assistant Superintendent of Schools for Chicago.
↑ Goodspeed, Thomas Wakefield (1972). A History of the University of Chicago, Founded by John D. Rockefeller: The First Quarter-Century. University of Chicago Press. pp.20–22. ISBN9780226303833.
1 2 "Myth of Openness", Integrating the Life of the Mind (2009), accessed 23 September 2013
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