Northwestern University: Foundation and Early Education

Northwestern University began with organizing efforts by a group of Methodists in Chicago. On May 31, 1850, nine men, including John Evans, met in lawyer Grant Goodrich's office to discuss founding a university in the American Midwest. On January 28, 1851, Illinois approved an incorporating act, creating a legal entity under the name of the university's board of trustees and granting powers to hold property, appoint personnel, and confer degrees.

A charter did not mean immediate teaching. The founders still had to raise funds, select a site, erect buildings, and recruit teachers and students. First president Clark Hinman died in 1854 without seeing the institution open. Teaching finally began in Evanston on November 5, 1855, in a three-story wooden building at Davis Street and Hinman Avenue, later known as Old College.

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The 1851 Act included several Methodist annual conferences in the system for selecting trustees and named Chicago-area figures such as Evans, Orrington Lunt, and Goodrich. Trustees served staggered four-year terms. Major appointments, the establishment of chairs, and regulations required a majority of the board to be present. The church could also send visitors to examinations and board discussions, though the visitors had no vote.

The same Act explicitly required no particular religious faith for admission and reserved university property exclusively for education, prohibiting its conversion into private stock for trustees or donors. Denominational participation in governance thus coexisted with admissions without a faith test. Trustees could prescribe courses, establish professional departments, and use funds for buildings, books, maps, globes, and physical and chemical apparatus. Their legal authority exceeded the scale of actual early operations.

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In 1853, the founders selected the 379-acre Foster farm on Lake Michigan north of Chicago, at a purchase price of $25,000. Based on financial records, the 2014 John Evans Study Committee report states that Evans supplied the initial payment and guaranteed the balance. Later debt was repaid largely by selling or leasing portions of the land. Campus development therefore also helped develop residential and commercial property in Evanston.

Other income came from Chicago real estate and the sale of “perpetual scholarships” at $100 each. These effectively exchanged advance contributions for tuition rights for purchasers' descendants, rather than functioning as modern merit-based scholarships. The 1855 amendment added tax exemption for university property and prohibited ordinary liquor sales within four miles of the site, with exceptions for medical, technical, and sacramental uses. The university's financial and moral ideals both affected its surrounding community.

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According to the 1905 university history, teaching at opening was actually conducted by mathematics professor Henry S. Noyes and Greek language and literature professor William D. Godman. Noyes also handled administration, while Godman served as faculty secretary and librarian. A published faculty list did not necessarily count people who had arrived: Abel Stevens, listed for rhetoric and English literature, never came.

Godman's recollections, quoted in the history, describe the opening day as chiefly devoted to examining and placing students. The first registrants came from Evanston and places including Indiana and Iowa, with faculty and founders' networks helping recruitment. Because local schools struggled to provide preparation adequate for university courses, and scholarship purchasers also pressed their needs, a preparatory program was later housed in the same building. Actual student circumstances continually reshaped the goal of founding a university.

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The Hinman Literary Society, established in 1855 and named for the deceased president, acquired his books. It held debates, speeches, readings of papers, and musical activities and arranged public lectures that drew townspeople. Inadequate early lighting often meant afternoon meetings. Practical matters such as stoves, firewood, and room management also entered its minutes.

Literary training was not isolated from contemporary politics. Debate topics preserved in the history for 1858–1859 included whether the Union would dissolve, the political performance of Douglas and Lincoln, and the effect of Harpers Ferry on relations between North and South. Students practiced argument and public speaking outside classes. Positions and decisions in these debates belonged to particular participants, not a unified political opinion of the entire university.

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In June 1856, the faculty presented library needs to the trustees. A committee recommended $1,000 for books that year and annual renewals, with selection guided by faculty. By 1857, reports listed nearly two thousand volumes. The annual appropriation was subsequently withdrawn, however, making President Randolph Foster's purchases, salary donations, and transfers of private books important supplements. The library faced budget limits from the start; the charter did not automatically furnish it.

In 1869, Latin professor Daniel Bonbright learned while in Europe that the German scholar Johannes Schulze's collection was for sale and traveled to Berlin to inspect it. Luther Greenleaf's support enabled the purchase. Classical scholarship and German university dissertations entered the collections, connecting the new lakeside institution with European learning. Early education thus gradually expanded from a few teachers' classrooms into an environment sustained by books, student societies, and international intellectual resources.

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