Ohio University was first conceived in the 1787 contract between the Board of Treasury of the United States and the Ohio Company of Associates, which set aside the College Lands to support a university, and subsequently approved by the territorial legislature in 1802 and the Ohio General Assembly in 1804,Act of February 18, 1804, 2 v. L.O. p. 193. Printed in full in opening for students in 1809. Retyped & graphics rescanned by It was the first university to be established in the former Northwest Territory. The history of Ohio University predates its founding, as a part of the post-Revolutionary period that saw the nation's first land grants and continues through stages of conflict and change into standardization, digital advents, widespread research, and its present survival with strategic research, retrenchment, and impactful upgrades.
America's experiment
Background
Public support for higher education in America was not new when Manasseh Cutler first decided to organize an expedition bound for the Ohio Country. The university was first envisioned by Manasseh Cutler, credited as the school's founder along with Revolutionary War Brigadier General Rufus Putnam. Cutler had served as a chaplain in then-General Washington's Continental Army. On March 1, 1786, Cutler attended a meeting at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern with Putnam, Benjamin Tupper, and Samuel Holden Parsons to form the Ohio Company of Associates. The following year, Cutler organized a contract with Congress whereby his associates (former soldiers of the Revolutionary War) might purchase one and a half million acres (6,000 km2) of land at the mouth of the Muskingum River with their Certificate of Indebtedness, which led to a contract being drawn up, later approved by the Confederation Congress. Provisions of the contract included setting aside two townships in the center of the purchase for a university; these "College Lands"See College Lands: Ohio University Chartered, and Land Ordinance of 1785, and Act of February 18, 1804, v. 2, L. O. p. 193, An act establishing an University in the town of Athens. are in Appalachia. The Confederation Congress, which operated under the Articles of Confederation, did not work with an executor or cabinet. Executive roles transacted from committees of Congress or appointed persons.
Considered one of the most important legislative acts of the Confederation Congress, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established a precedent under which the federal government would be sovereign and expand westward with the admission of new states, instead of the expansion of existing states and their established sovereignty under the Articles of Confederation. The influence of Thomas Jefferson was felt in the way the ordinance territory would be gridded into townships to provide an orderly settlement process and government revenue.Jerel A. Rosati, James M. Scott, The Politics of United States Foreign Policy, Cengage Learning, 2010, p. 20 The 1787 ordinance encouraged public schools, stipulating that "Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged" (this phrase is engraved on the university's gateway); furthering the former 1785 ordinance which had instructed each township to designate land that would be provided to public education.
Establishment
By the spring of 1788, Rufus Putnam had gathered fifty laborers, surveyors, and boat builders and proceeded to the Muskingum River, and he surveyed and laid out a town to provide a home for the future university. In 1797, settlers from Marietta traveled downstream on the Ohio River and up the Hocking River to establish a location for the school, founding Athens due to its location directly between the original capital of Chillicothe and Marietta. "On January 8, 1802, the legislature of the Northwest Territory and Governor Arthur St. Clair approved the charter of the American Western University. This institution of higher education was never opened." In addition to being instrumental in its founding, Putnam was also an original trustee of the university, and Putnam Hall is named after him.Hubbard, Robert Ernest. General Rufus Putnam: George Washington's Chief Military Engineer and the "Father of Ohio", pp. 157–60, McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina, 2020. .
At the time of the establishment of its first university, "Ohio was occupied by numerous American Indian tribes:" the land on which Ohio University stands is the traditional territory of the Haudenosauneega Confederacy and the Osage Nation, which was consigned to the United States by the Western Confederacy in 1795 as part of the Treaty of Greenville. George Washington stated "the settlement of southeastern Ohio was not accidental, but the result of the careful deliberation of wise, prudent, and patriotic men."
A second charter was passed on February 18, 1804, by the Ohio General Assembly, establishing "Ohio University". This last approval happened eleven months after Ohio was admitted to the Union. On December 6, 1804, the first trustees, including Putnam, and Governor Tiffin gathered to raise operating funds by leasing university lands. In the spring of 1806, the trustees began to train pupils for the college's work. That year, a two-story building was completed by Jehiel Gregory on the College Green. The first three students of Ohio University enrolled in 1809 Retyped & graphics rescanned by and Ohio University graduated two students with bachelor's degrees in 1815. Like many of the first American universities, Ohio University was planned to be outside major metropolitan areas to protect academe and studies from busy life, while later public universities would be usually planned in metropolitan areas.
Mid-to-late nineteenth century
John Newton Templeton became the first Black graduate of the university in 1828. An idea of the university's radical history was gathered in the commencement of 1828, featuring elements as groundbreaking as the speaker role of Templeton and an address on Female Education—decades before the suffrage movement and Civil War began. The university's journey as an academic center would not see its maturity until after the 1830s, as it struggled to garner significant funds from the state legislature, a body notoriously controlled by farmers who despised liberal arts. The first publication, The Echo and University Record, began and was discontinued in 1843. Ohio University was closed between 1843 and 1848.Hoover, Thomas Nathanael. The History of Ohio University p. 85, Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio, 1954. Beta Theta Pi became the first fraternity. Many people from Athens were active in the Civil War activities on behalf of the Union. The university served as station of interest for activity between Ohio and what would become West Virginia. The Morrill Land Grant College Act's passage saw Ohio and Miami universities attempt to persuade the state to divide the designated of land, but delays curtailed the effort and, ultimately, Ohio University was neglected by the Stalwarts who did not assign any land or money from the act to it. In 1874, the Ohio General Assembly instead strongly supported the new Ohio State University created by the Morrill Act in Columbus and proposed that both Ohio and Miami be demoted to preparatory schools.Hollow, Betty. Ohio University 1804–2004 p. 68, Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio, 2003. In 1880, it was suggested that Ohio and Miami be merged directly with Ohio State, but the 1896 Sleeper Bill introduced by Athenian David L. Sleeper, the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, provided annual support for the university from the state, allowing for Ohio University's survival and elevation to being a state university and setting the precedent for continuing state support. Thus, Ohio University was one of the earliest institutions of higher education in the state to be invested with some state-level public support through taxes, starting in 1896. A second challenge to demote the university was defeated in 1906.
Growth and female education Changing admissions
Women were admitted to university for the first time as undergraduates in 1868. Margaret Boyd graduated from Ohio University in 1873, having enrolled in the university's preparatory program in the spring of 1868. Recurrent melancholy and illness led to her diary entries that read "I feel so sad today" and "I feel so sick and so bad," although she added she could do as well as boys. On June 17 she informed President Scott she did not want a diploma with masculine endings, and the endings were changed. Scott remarked at the 1873 commencement ceremony that Boyd was the "oldest of a great sisterhood of graduates." Boyd has remained a popular historical figure on the Ohio University campus, with numerous functions named in her honor.
Only a few years after Boyd became the university's first woman graduate in 1873, there were fourteen female students on campus, including Minerva Woodson, who was probably the first female Black student to enroll at Ohio University. A decade after Boyd's graduation, the East Wing, now Wilson Hall, housed thirty women at $0.50 per week; the janitor's family; and the first female faculty member, Cynthia Weld, who was hired in 1883 to teach history and rhetoric. Also during this period, the first college choir was organized in 1894–95 and the first known international student, Saki Taro Murayama of Japan, graduated in 1895. Beginning in 1902, the new State Normal College (later the College of Education) drew many women who were planning to become teachers. To house them, the university acquired Howard Hall and in 1906 built Boyd Hall, named for Margaret Boyd.
The first Black female graduate was Martha Jane Hunley in 1916, who graduated summa cum laude with a major in literature and English studies in 1916. Hunley had to find her own housing in Athens. In 1999, the university recognized her accomplishment by placing her name, along with John Newton Templeton's, on the Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium.
By 1913 there were around 330 women and 500 men in the student body, and organized chapters of four national sororities—Pi Beta Phi (1889), Alpha Gamma Delta (1908), Alpha Xi Delta (1911), and Chi Omega (1913)—as well as several departmental clubs, including the Home Economics Club and Kindergarten Club; and the Young Women's Christian Association, which sponsored activities ranging from volunteering in the community to team sports. That year, the university hired its first Dean for Women, Irma Voigt. She later wrote that, aside from getting a desk in the hallway of Cutler Hall, she received little instruction, much less comradery, from President Alston Ellis. Within three weeks, she called a meeting of all women students and faculty to discuss establishing a Women's League, which would develop "spirit, loyalty, and standards".
Early twentieth century
The university had offered a liberal arts curriculum through the 1800s, but the liberal arts were not fully organized until the formation of the main undergraduate college—the College of Liberal Arts—in 1902. The bobcat was selected as the official university mascot in 1925.
Voigt served as Dean for Women for 36 years, during which time she helped pioneer activities for women with her involvement in the university branch of the YWCA, the Women's Recreation Association, Student Council, and the Panhellenic Council and as the first president of the Athens branch of the American Association of University Women. In 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote, Voigt, a suffragist, arranged political forums for women, believing that some men were "sitting back and waiting for us to make a mess out of our enfranchisement." Voigt liberalized women's rules, refereed women's basketball games, and took hiking trips with "her girls".