The University of Notre Dame: A Lakeside Foundation and Early Teaching

The University of Notre Dame began as an educational institution established in northern Indiana by French priest Edward Sorin and Brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross. On first arriving in the United States, they lived at St. Peter’s Mission near Vincennes and hoped to establish a college there. Bishop de la Hailandière of Vincennes feared that the existing Catholic college and a new one could not both survive. He instead offered land near South Bend on condition that a college be built within two years.

Sorin and seven Brothers set out northward on November 16, 1842. The 1895 university history dates their arrival at the lakes to November 26. Later, John Theodore Wack’s thesis compared Sorin’s correspondence and recollections, noting records of the 27th as well and suggesting that an initial visit and actual occupation may have occurred on different days. November 1842 is therefore a secure founding period, with the 26th the customary anniversary, rather than a single date encompassing all preparations.

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The lakeside was not an empty site without a past. A log building used by earlier missionaries served as both home and small chapel, with inhabitants and some cultivated land nearby. The Brothers had to repair buildings, clear land, and establish a new church for their community and neighboring Catholics. As priests, Brothers, and Sisters arrived, accommodation, food, and teaching space became urgent needs.

A severe winter, dwindling funds, and delays in the architect’s arrival prevented immediate construction of the planned main building. The community first built a small brick house serving as classroom, student lodging, and bakery. The main building’s cornerstone was laid on August 28, 1843; some rooms became usable in June 1844, and students moved in afterward. Meanwhile, on January 15, 1844, Indiana’s legislature incorporated the school as a university with degree-awarding powers. Legal authority and completion of buildings and courses were connected but distinct steps.

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Founding resources combined funds controlled by the bishop, European assistance, local support, and the community’s labor. The 1895 history records that building materials and daily costs quickly exhausted available money. When the architect finally arrived in 1843, South Bend merchant Samuel Byerley offered a $500 loan and up to $2,000 in credit at his store. Father Marivault also offered to draw on family funds in France.

A cash loan and store credit were different resources: credit chiefly allowed purchases without immediate payment. These arrangements enabled construction to begin before all building costs had been raised. Completion did not bring financial stability, however, and the same history records prolonged indebtedness afterward. An account confined to donated land and enthusiastic fundraising would miss the vulnerability of construction sustained through borrowing.

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A university announcement of January 1, 1850, stated that religious instruction was provided for Catholic students while young people of other faiths were also admitted. It promised not to interfere with their religious principles but required respectful attendance at collective religious exercises. This was inclusion within a Catholic educational framework, not a fully secular arrangement.

The announcement was explicit about discipline. Teachers recorded conduct weekly, examinations and exhibitions were held monthly, and outstanding students received public rewards while the names of those unanimously criticized by teachers were also announced. Only students whose conduct had been faultless in the preceding month, and whose parents or friends requested it, could visit outside the school on the day following an exhibition. Musical and debating societies allowed students to hold offices and perform publicly. Classes, religion, rewards, and restrictions together formed boarding-school education.

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The catalogue for 1854–1855 set out a complete six-year course including preparatory study. The first two years taught English, Latin, Greek, geography, arithmetic, and history; the next four emphasized humanities, poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy in sequence. Classical reading was linked to composition, while mathematics progressed through algebra and geometry to trigonometry and surveying. The highest year also listed logic, ethics, astronomy, and chemistry, with lectures and experiments.

New students were examined by the academic officer before placement, and faster learners could advance to higher classes. The catalogue also offered an approximately two-year partial course for students with some English and Latin, emphasizing English, mathematics, and bookkeeping for young men entering business. Different levels and objectives thus coexisted within the institution. Not everyone on its student lists can be counted as a university undergraduate in today’s sense.

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The 1850 faculty list shows priests, Brothers, and other teachers sharing instruction. Some taught Latin and English; others combined Greek, French, and music, while Brothers handled bookkeeping, arithmetic, and preparatory English. The 1855 catalogue listed a library, chemical and physical apparatus, and around 4,000 botanical specimens, also emphasizing the opportunities provided by the governing community’s everyday use of French. Resources and linguistic networks gave knowledge exchange tangible forms.

These recruitment documents also preserve evidence of an institution still developing. The 1855 catalogue acknowledged that law and medicine had not yet opened, although permitted by the charter. Instruction in those areas remained a future prospect or conditional on applicants. The crucial early change at Notre Dame was therefore more than acquiring the title university: it was the continuing organization of staff, graded courses, experimental resources, and residential life that gradually gave the title practical substance.

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