History (1869 - 1919)

Charter Day, celebrating first 50, delayed

FEBRUARY 15, 1919

Because of the war from which America had just emerged victorious (a victory which a Nebraska alum, John J. Pershing, had led), Feb. 15, 1919, the 50th anniversary of the university's founding, came and went without fanfare, save for an item in the Feb. 14 Daily Nebraskan. The article noted that Charter Day, as well as the mid-winter commencement, were to be postponed. By way of explanation, the paper gave "A number of prospective graduates are still in the service of Uncle Sam."

The condition was temporary. The coming fall semester would bring record enrollment, an influx of servicemen and more generally a renewed attention to education after the traumatic experience of the "War to End All Wars."

Varsity Dairy opens

JANUARY 1, 1917

The dairy store begins operations on East Campus as Varsity Dairy. An item in the Feb. 6, 1917 Daily Nebraskan notes an increase in the price of milk and ice cream. Milk would be sold for nine cents a quart and ice cream for nine cents per half pint.

Chemistry Laboratories Building

SEPTEMBER 1, 1916

Chemistry Laboratory, today known as Avery Hall, is built to replace the original 1885 Chemistry Hall. It and Bessey Hall were the first on the city campus funded by a special levy for university construction.  

School of Commerce (Business) organized

SEPTEMBER 1, 1913

J.E. LeRossingnol is named at the director of the new School of Commerce, and the college is formed. 

The college's purpose, as quoted in an edition of The Daily Nebraskan in 1913, was that "of providing for students preparing for business or allied lines of work, vocational training suited to their needs. Business is now in its higher forms, as much a learned profession as theology, law, medicine, engineering, agriculture and other difficult and complicated arts and demands of those who would rise from the ranks as thorough, scientific practical training. Practical training is obtained shapely in actual business experience, but theoretical and scientific education, with the broad view and large grasp so essential to the highest success, can be best obtained in the university." 

Courses are announced in auditing, business law, business organization and general business education. 

In 1919 the college becomes the College of Business Administration, and in 2017 it is changed to the College of Business. 

First Women's Track and Field Meet

MAY 12, 1911

On the afternoon of Friday, May 12, 1911, the first women's track meet convened on Nebraska Field. During the event, which was organized by student Ina Gittings (pictured pole-vaulting in the background photo), a handful of men's track records were broken by their feminine counterparts, and a baseball game was played. Unfortunately, none of these records were able to be officially reported by the Daily Nebraskan, as they had no female reporter to attend the event and men were not allowed admittance. 

The May 13, 1911 Daily Nebraskan carried an article titled "RECORDS ARE SMASHED: Sid Collins' Record in Shot Put Broken By a Girl." The excerpt below hints at the spectacle:

"Reports on both the meet and the game are unofficial as they were handed to a Nebraskan reporter by a prominent university student who was dislodged from a choice crack in the fence and dragged protesting away by a burly policeman."

Nebraska one of largest universities in nation

FEBRUARY 3, 1910

In its 40th year since academic activities began, the University of Nebraska, now considered — along with Michigan, Wisconsin and California — one of the "Big Four of the American West," is ranked the 12th largest university in the country and sixth largest state university.

Hartley Burr Alexander

SEPTEMBER 1, 1908

Hartley Burr Alexander '97 returns to Lincoln as the head of the philosophy department after earning a doctorate in philosophy at Columbia. He is known for developing the iconography, program of art and themes for a number of monumental buildings, including the Nebraska State Capitol and Memorial Stadium and others nationwide. Alexander was also a poet and anthropologist who studied Native American culture, and religious, democratic and political thought.

Alexander’s collaboration with architect Bertram Goodhue and sculptor Lee Lawrie on the magnificent Capitol Building led to a number of works on buildings nationwide, including the Los Angeles Public Library and Rockefeller Center in New York City. He is believed to have coined the term “iconographer” to describe the work he did.

His artistic themes for the Capitol focus on the history of justice and law, and honor to Native Americans and pioneering homesteaders. His words carved into the Capitol and the stadium are familiar to many Nebraskans. His Capitol inscriptions include “The Salvation of the State is Watchfulness of the Citizen” and “Born of the Earth and Touched of the Deep Blue Sky. Out of the Distant Past, I Come Unto You, Your Mother Corn.” His most famous inscription on Memorial Stadium reads “Not the Victory, but the Action, Not the Goal, But the Game. In the Deed, the Glory.”

The Alexander Building, home to the Office of Admissions, was named in his honor in the 1990s.

Teachers College Established

FEBRUARY 14, 1908

The Board of Regents established the College of Education, also known as the Teachers College, and named Dr. Chas E. Fordyce as dean. The focus of the college was to be on "the history, theory and practice of teaching to improve the quality of secondary teaching."

It wasn't until 1920 that the Teachers College building was dedicated — the building still stands west of the Nebraska Union plaza as Canfield Hall North.

The College of Education and Human Sciences is today home to the university's education programs.

Construction begins on the Temple Building

APRIL 10, 1906

Construction of the Temple Building begins, funded by a controversial $66,666.66 donation from Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller. Located catercorner from the southeast corner of the original four-block campus bounded by R, T, 10th and 12th Streets, the Temple was the first building to expand City Campus beyond that tidy square.

The Temple stands today as the home of the Johnny Carson School of Theatre & Film; a new building is under construction for the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts, opening fall 2019.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln today is located on three campuses: the 274-acre City Campus, the 337-acre East Campus and the 249-acre Innovation Campus. Including off-campus acreage, the university spreads across 1185 acres in Lincoln, or 363 city blocks.

Black Masque Forms

SEPTEMBER 1, 1905

In Fall 1905, Black Masque is established as an honorary society for women students. In 1921, it affiliates with the national Mortar Board organization.

Black Masque initiates members by "tapping," in which current members tap new initiates into membership. In the background, a tapping is shown from Ivy Day, 1925.

In 1975, membership in Black Masque was opened to men.

Innocents Society Forms

MAY 2, 1903

The Innocents Society is formed as a senior honorary society for male students. The society was modeled after the societies at Harvard and Yale, and these institutions helped mold and shape the traditions adopted by the Innocents.

The background photo shows the tackling tradition in 1925. On Ivy Day, initiates would find out they were chosen to join the society when they were tackled by robed current members. Due to injuries occasionally suffered, the tradition of tackling has been discontinued and new members are now initiated with a "shading," where they are presented with sunglasses.

In 1976, the Innocents Society opened to women.

The Abbotts: Reformers for Social Justice

JUNE 13, 1901

Sometimes greatness comes in twos. Grace and Edith Abbott grew up in Grand Island, the daughters of Nebraska’s first lieutenant governor, Othman Abbott, and Elizabeth Abbott, an early women’s suffrage leader in Nebraska. The Abbott household was pro-equality in all forms: race in earlier days, when Elizabeth participated in the Underground Railroad to help resettle escaped slaves, gender later when both parents worked for women’s rights in the workplace and the voting booth; Susan B. Anthony was known to stay at the family home on visits to Nebraska.

Grace and her older sister Edith would both attend the University. Edith, as a freshman, was elected an officer of the Nebraska Suffrage Association. She graduated in 1901 Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Economics; Edith gave the class’s toast at the alumni banquet the night before the June 13 commencement, speaking on “First Fruits of the Century.” Grace entered graduate school in Lincoln in 1903. By 1908, both sisters had moved to Chicago, where they completed their formal educations at the University of Chicago. (Edith, a Ph.D. in Economics in 1905; Grace, a Ph.M. in Political Science in 1909.) There they moved in to Hull-House, an immigrant settlement center, where they came face to face with the deep injustices visited on the immigrants, women, children and elderly of that era. Together with Jane Addams and others, they would shortly form the Immigrants' Protection League. Over their lifetimes in social work, the Abbott sisters engendered change that reverberates today, chiefly in child labor law and in social security for the elderly. Grace was a tireless worker and advocate for children, from hosting a national radio show, "Your Child," on NBC, to heading the federal government’s Child Labor Division and implementation of the first child labor laws. Edith would help draft the Social Security Act. Edith would become the first graduate school dean in an American university, in 1924 taking the head position of the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration; while there she would establish social work as a field of study. Grace was the first woman to be nominated for a position in the presidential cabinet (Secretary of Labor, by Herbert Hoover, but she was not confirmed).

At Charter Day events of 1939, Edith Abbott spoke on adoption of the Social Security Act; her friend W.E.B. DuBois spoke that evening at St. Paul United Methodist Church downtown.

Grace Abbott died in 1939; Edith followed in 1957. Both sisters lie, along with their parents and siblings, in the family plot at Grand Island Cemetery. Edith Abbott wrote of the source of her sister's essential grit: “To the end of her life, Grace was a daughter of the pioneers–with the vigorous 'dash' of the pioneer who is able to accept temporary defeat in the confident belief in ultimate victory ... even when the odds on the other side are very great."

The Abbott sisters’ papers are held in Nebraska’s Archives and Special Collections.

Ivy Day Established

JUNE 11, 1901

The tradition of Ivy Day, a spring fete now held the first weekend in May, is launched. As the academic calendar ran in those early days into June, the first Ivy Day, modeled after traditions in the East, was held on June 11, at 4 p.m.

N.M. Graham delivered that first Ivy Day oration, culminating with the first ceremonial planting of the ivy, a tradition which endures today. Graham, quoted in the Nebraskan-Hesperian from June 13, 1901:

"As this vine clings to the building, so may we cling with fidelity and loyalty to our alma mater, and as our opportunities to befriend it increase with the growth of our influence, may we protect and care for its interests. As this rich green foliage shall embellish this wall, so may we be a credit to this university, whose children we are."

Ivy Day grew to a point of unsurpassed significance on the annual university calendar, a day on which the university paused and assessed its considerable academic achievements; it was front-page news across the state for decades. Within a few years of its beginning, the Innocents Society and Black Masque (later an affiliate of the national Mortar Board organization) would form, making their debuts within the Ivy Day ceremonies, and it is those organizations which have carried the tradition to the present.

Elisha Benjamin Andrews

SEPTEMBER 22, 1900

Elisha Benjamin Andrews was installed as university chancellor on September 22, 1900. The Civil War veteran had been making waves as superintendent of schools for the City of Chicago. He had led distinguished universities before: Denison University in Ohio from 1875 to 1879, and his alma mater Brown University from 1889 to 1898.

The populist New York Sun newspaper, upon hearing of Andrews' move to Nebraska, noted his advance from Providence to Chicago, where he implemented, apparently to the Sun's distaste, "free lunch for school children." "A stirrer and a ripper is the doctor, and make no mistake," the paper warned the people of Lincoln.

Academically, a culture of debate rose at the university, in which the highest undergraduate academic calling was to be a member of the team led by Miller M. Fogg. The Innocents Society was organized in 1903, in part as a counter to Theta Nu Epsilon, an antiauthoritarian "drinking fraternity." All-male, it was joined by the women's Black Masque a few years later. Both were dedicated to advancing both the individual and the institution, and membership was highly sought after.

Andrews sought and obtained funding from Standard Oil's John D. Rockefeller for the university's first student activities building, matched at a 2:1 ratio with state funds after Andrews defeated the famously loquacious William Jennings Bryan in the court of public opinion. A "Free Silver" advocate, Andrews was one of the Great Commoner's primary antagonists; he was no wallflower, and his outspokenness inspired a rare unity of Lincoln and Omaha interests: both the Lincoln Journal and the Omaha World-Herald editorialized continually against his continued leadership. The Temple Building was erected anyway, as were nine other new buildings on his watch.

Andrews re-ignited the restless ferment that had previously reached its zenith under Canfield. By the end of his chancellorship, the University of Nebraska was the nation's fifth-largest public institution. At a Board of Regents meeting on Nov. 6, 1908, Andrews, in ill health, asked that the resignation that he had quietly tendered the prior year now be accepted, and it was.

According to the historian Robert Knoll in his "Prairie University," "Some persons think him the greatest chancellor the University of Nebraska has ever had and one of the noblest men who have passed this way."

School of Domestic Science Established

APRIL 13, 1898

The Board of Regents established the School of Domestic Science primarily as a cooking school. Its only professor was Rosa Bouton. Bouton had previously taught a food and nutrition course called "Domestic Chemistry." 

An April 15, 1898, edition of The Nebraskan reacted to the decision of the regents in saying, "Hereafter there will be no excuse for University girls being ignorant of how to cook and all are expected to become expert in the culinary art."

The School of Domestic Science would eventually become Home Economics, and later merged with Teachers College to become the College of Education and Human Sciences.

Graduate College, first in West, is formed

APRIL 16, 1896

On April 16, 1896, the Board of Regents approved organization of a formal Graduate College under the direction of Professor August Edgren. Nebraska had awarded postgraduate degrees through the individual colleges beginning in 1882-83, and had standardized requirements for a Master's Degree in 1886-87; five women and four men had earned advanced degrees in those five years. Demand kept growing, with 46 advanced degrees earned the year prior to the Graduate College's organization.

Nebraska is recognized as being the first major institution of the Trans-Mississippi West to organize a graduate school. The program was unusual in that it conferred degrees based upon the student’s body of research and high quality, as opposed to the fashion of the day that conferred based on time spent in the program.

Edgren would leave the university in 1901 for his native Sweden and a position as Literature Director for the Nobel Institute.

Fem Bot. Sem. Founded

SEPTEMBER 1, 1895

Fem Bot. Sem. is established by Mariel Gere and other women studying science. The Seminarium Botanicum, or Sem. Bot., was established as exclusively male; Fem Bot. Sem. would produce its share of luminaries as well.

Willa Cather earns her degree

JUNE 12, 1895

Few individuals have had such profound impact on the University of Nebraska as has Willa Cather. While in Lincoln, her intellect and skills as a journalist and writer were on full display early; one of her early bylines appeared over a memorial for Thomas Carlyle in the Nebraska State Journal of March 1, 1891; written for an English class, it was submitted by her professor for publication. Cather was 17 years old at the time, and a student in the university's preparatory Latin School; she later referenced publication of the Carlyle piece as the turning point, the point where she decided to become a writer.

Under the headline "Concerning Thos. Carlyle," her writing voice is already impressively mature, and her later themes of life and land were present; the final paragraph is here: "He died as he lived. Proudly refusing a tomb in Westminster, as did one other great English writer, he was buried out on the wild Scotch heath, where the cold winds of the North sea sing the chants of Ossian among the Druid pines. He lies there on that wild heath, the only thing in the British Isles with which he ever seemed to harmonize. He dreamed always in life; great, wild, maddening dreams: perhaps he sleeps quietly now, — perhaps he wakes."

On campus, Cather is a force, rising quickly. An early example of her short fiction appeared in The Hesperian on Oct. 15, 1892. "Lou, the Prophet" is the story of a homesick Dane. She quickly rose to the paper's editorship. She earned her English degree in 1895 and took a job as associate editor with The Courier, a local weekly, and began contributing to national magazines, including Ladies Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post. In 1913, she published O Pioneers!, a novel of the spirit of the farmers who settled the Plains, following with Song of the Lark and My Ántonia. H. L. Mencken wrote, "No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as My Ántonia." She received the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1923 for One of Ours. Cather was featured on PBS's American Masters series with "Willa Cather: The Road is All." Cather still engages readers with evocative language and powerful stories about people, places, emotions and fundamental human spirit.

See the Willa Cather Archive.

School of Music founded, in two places

SEPTEMBER 1, 1894

Like the College of Law, the beginning of the School of Music is organic and a bit chaotic, finding at least some threads in the proprietary schools that popped up in the early years around the university.

In 1894, Chancellor Canfield appointed Carrie Belle Raymond, a noted Lincoln musician and impresario, as Director of Vocal Music at the university; she would establish the University Chorus and direct the University Orchestra. In the same year, a private school was founded on the periphery of the university at the state's intellectual center in Lincoln. Owned by Willard Kimball and known as "The University School of Music," it operated in a purpose-built three-story brick building across from campus at 11th and R Streets.

It wasn't until 1930 that the Board of Regents purchased USofM for $100,000, unifying music education within the university; the Glenn Korff School of Music is today part of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts.

Today, Kimball Recital Hall stands on the site of the old University School of Music.

Quarter-centennial Charter Day

FEBRUARY 15, 1894

Quarter Centennial Charter Day, the celebration of the University’s 25th anniversary, is held on February 15. Willa Cather, managing editor of The Hesperian, published essays from alumni and faculty in the “Quarter Centennial Number.”

The 'Silver Anniversary' program notes a University Glee Club performance of an early University of Nebraska song, "Scarlet and Cream," adapted by R.H. Manley, whose stanzas end with "Hurrah for the Scarlet and Cream!"

School colors: Scarlet and Cream chosen

NOVEMBER 1, 1892

Nebraska adopts Scarlet and Cream as its official school colors.

In a page-one unsigned editorial in the second issue of The Nebraskan, for November 1892, the writers note the moment:

"Old gold has been swept from the pinnacle of fame, as it no longer represents the University of Nebraska. There was unanimous assent to the proposition of changing the university colors. While of necessity the selection of new colors was hasty, yet a better choice could not be made. Something bright and attractive was needed and we have scarlet and cream as a result."

Information on the use of scarlet and cream can be found in the Nebraska Brand Guide.

George Flippin; first Black student athlete

SEPTEMBER 1, 1892

In its second year, Nebraska football is integrated as George Flippin becomes the first African-American student athlete at Nebraska and only the fifth black athlete at a predominantly white university. That year, the University of Missouri forfeits a game against Nebraska when they refuse to play against the integrated Nebraska team, and in that same year he is initially refused service at Omaha's Paxton Hotel until his teammates stood in solidarity with him.

Flippin is a force on the football field, but he's just as accomplished — if not moreso — in the classroom. In 1895 he is elected by fellow students to the presidency of the Palladian Literary Society, the most prestigious student organization of the time. Flippin goes on to a career in medicine, spending his life taking care of the people of Stromsburg, Nebraska, as the town doctor.

Law College becomes part of University

SEPTEMBER 1, 1891

In 1891, the Board of Regents voted in favor of taking over the private Central Law College and to incorporate it into the university system. Classes began that fall. 

Nebraska Supreme Court Justice Manoah B. Reese was appointed dean in 1893, and in 1903 was replaced by Roscoe Pound. 

Pound, a Nebraska alum who received his BA, MA and PhD at the university, required all students to provide a high school diploma for admittance to the school. He also instituted practice courts and case method studies for the students. Pound went on to become dean and professor at Harvard Law School.

Pershing comes to University

AUGUST 12, 1891

In the fall of 1891, soon after Canfield becomes chancellor, Lieutenant John J. Pershing joins the University as a professor of military science and tactics. Pershing revitalizes military drill, as well as a sense of orderliness and mission in the student body. In 1894, his "Varsity Rifles" cadets win the national competitive drills in Omaha. The Nebraska drill unit is renamed the Pershing Rifles by the cadets upon his departure from the university in 1895.

At Chancellor Canfield's urging, Pershing earned a law degree while at Nebraska. Pershing eventually rises to become the only active-duty "General of the Armies" in U.S. history after leading the American military in World War I.

"Black Jack" Pershing's affinity for the university and the City of Lincoln was life-long. He purchased a large home at 18th and B Streets in the city's Near South district in 1920, planning to use it for his retirement. His busy-ness in the capitals of the world kept him from ever realizing that dream, but he visited often, as his sisters came to live there.

In 1948, Pershing was buried under a standard-issue soldier's stone in Arlington National Cemetery. Today, Pershing Rifles units operate at over 60 institutions across the nation.

Canfield comes to NU; signaling new era

JULY 1, 1891

James H. Canfield becomes Chancellor of the University in the summer of 1891. Canfield met a culture at Nebraska that was poised for an era of greatness; and he was a great leader and contributor in that era. He relished robust interaction with students; Canfield was no ivory-tower leader. The characters of the Canfield era were among the university's most luminary: Willa Cather, later to become a great American novelist, edited The Hesperian campus newspaper. Louise Pound, later to be a preeminent folklorist, and her brother Roscoe, later one of Harvard Law's most revered leaders, were in graduate school. Lieutenant John J. Pershing, later to lead the American effort in World War I as General of the Armies (the only person to achieve that highest military ranking in their lifetime), brought a West Pointer's bearing to the whole affair.

While at NU, Canfield presided over the construction of a new library for the university. The building, now known as Architecture Hall, stands today as the oldest at the university, and arguably its most beloved. Among his many influences felt today is through his support of intercollegiate athletics, then a contentious subject on university campuses nationwide. A baseball team had begun in 1899; in Canfield's first year, Dr. Langdon Frothingham, who had brought a football with him from Harvard, coached the new University of Nebraska football team to wins over Doane College and Omaha YMCA. And on December 28, the Western Interstate Foot-Ball Association is formed to include Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa.

"Frats vs. Barbs"

DECEMBER 1, 1890

The early university was essentially a frontier institution. The very fabric of the place was oriented toward inclusivity and egalitarianism. Its social life, beginning in its first year of operation, was oriented around the debates and intellectual stimulations of the co-educational Palladian Literary Society. Factionalism would soon intrude, as in 1873, a schism within the Palladian between “hay seeds” and “aristocrats” ended in the aristocrats bolting, and forming the Adelphian.

In 1875, with the entry of the first Greek organization, the old egalitarian ideals began slipping away. The Palladian, and the Adelphian’s successor, the University Union, would soon vote to refuse membership to members of the fraternities. Over time, students began self-identifying as the “Barbarians” or “Barbs” of the literary societies, and the Greeks of the fraternities and sororities.

The Barbs vs. Frats feuds came to full boil in the early 1890s. The Hesperian, affiliated strongly with the literary societies, pressed its home-field advantage by continually editorializing against the Greeks, with the first such broadside published on December 1, 1890; the tone was most often one-sided, but persisted through the first half of that decade.

In 1895, Willa Cather put a stop to it; though the old tensions lived on, the debate was over after the senior from Red Cloud had her say. On Saturday, June 8, at a meeting of the literary societies, Cather, representing the Union society, was scheduled to present an essay on Edgar Allen Poe, after a fellow student, Hugh Walker of the Palladian, presented an oration on “The Fate of the Greeks.” Walker’s presentation was, it turned out, a “roast” of the Greeks, “too misleading to accomplish any good,” according to the event organizer, Ned Abbott, in a letter to his mother. When Cather rose (she had become by this time a sympathizer with the Greeks, although a Barbarian herself), she did so without her Poe text. Instead, according to Abbott, she “waded into Walker with an improvised roast … Oh, it was glorious!” 

The first art show

NOVEMBER 15, 1888

In November and December 1888, the newly formed Haydon Art Club organized an exhibit of the painting The Wise and Foolish Virgins by Karl Von Piloty, which would hang in exhibition for a month at the U.S. Courtroom Post Office Building. The club, organized in May of that year, supported arts education in Nebraska. It became the Nebraska Art Association in 1902 and is now the Sheldon Art Association, with the mission of supporting the Sheldon Museum of Art.

Lewis Hicks publishes Nebraska's first Extension Bulletin

JANUARY 20, 1888

Lewis Hicks has the distinction of being the author of Nebraska’s first published Experiment Station Bulletin in 1888. The topic was Irrigation in Nebraska and described his findings from a trip to western Nebraska to observe irrigation in situ. Hicks predicted irrigation would greatly “increase the wealth and resources of western Nebraska” by an “intelligent and persevering use of the pure and copious streams flowing over it.” He was among the first to recognize the potential of groundwater as a source of irrigation for crops.

Hicks joined the faculty in 1884 as a professor of natural sciences. He believed in “learning by doing” and enjoyed leading field research, telling students “never to accept anything from a book you can acquire by observation.”

Rachel Lloyd, chemist, joins faculty

SEPTEMBER 15, 1887

The first American woman to earn a doctoral degree in chemistry (and second in the world), Rachel Holloway Lloyd earned the degree — at the age of 48 — from the University of Zurich on February 21, 1887. 

Recruited by chemistry department chair Henry Hudson Nicholson, who had become acquainted with Lloyd while both were students at Harvard, Lloyd joined the Nebraska faculty that year as the second member of the department and the only one to hold a doctorate. She was a popular professor due to her personal warmth, her elegant, cultured demeanor and her scientific prowess. Lloyd's personal correspondence demonstrates that warmth, signed "Chellie." In a tribute accompanying a National Historic Chemical Landmark designation in 2014, the American Chemical Society noted the impact of Lloyd on the entry of women into the field of chemistry: "(she) drew young women into the Chemistry Department and earned the university a reputation for nurturing women chemists at a time when they were largely excluded from the field."

During her time in Switzerland, Lloyd became interested in sugar beets as an agricultural commodity. Her research analyzing the sugar concentration in beets and how to improve beet varieties helped promote what became an important crop in Nebraska and throughout the United States, and a living legacy to Dr. Lloyd. She traveled the state and lectured frequently on beet improvements.  A polymath, she served as a board member of the Haydon Art Club (predecessor of the Sheldon Museum of Art), and is noted in the December 1888 edition of the Hesperian Student as presenting a paper on pottery and porcelain arts to a large and greatly-interested audience of students.

Ill health forced her retirement in 1894. Rachel Lloyd died in 1900 at age 61.

The Pounds

SEPTEMBER 1, 1885

Roscoe Pound enters the university in the fall of 1885, earns his bachelor’s degree in botany in 1888, an M.A. in botany in 1890, and the first Ph.D. granted in botany in 1897. He never attained a law degree, but after attending one year at Harvard Law was able to pass the bar and begin his rise in the legal ranks. A formidable scholar, he soon become Dean of the Nebraska Law College, and later of Harvard Law from 1916-1936, where he ranks among the most distinguished deans in that institution's history. His famous round desk (built so he could spread his diversity of interests in a circle and rotate from one to another) today occupies a place of honor in Harvard's law library.

Louise Pound earns her B.A. in 1892, and an M.A. in 1894. After earning a Ph.D. elsewhere, she joins the Nebraska English faculty. She focused on American authors and folkways and was a pioneer in the linguistic study of American English, such as trends in American ways of pronunciation and word creation. She was a gifted athlete as well, particularly in tennis and golf; she was the first female inducted into the Nebraska Sports Hall of Fame. In 1954 she was elected the Modern Language Association's 65th President, the first woman so honored.

Youngest sibling Olivia Pound also earned B.A. (1895) and M.A. (1907) degrees at Nebraska. She was assistant principal at Lincoln High School and was a noted writer and leader in the field of education. 

The Scientist: Charles Bessey joins faculty

SEPTEMBER 1, 1884

Botanist Charles E. Bessey is hired away from Iowa State to become Dean of the Industrial College, which had started in 1876 and was the forerunner of the College of Agriculture. Bessey’s vision of scientific research informing teaching, of the importance of translating science to practice (forming the basis of Nebraska Extension) and his popularity as a teacher changes the direction of the university. Bessey’s Sem. Bot. (Seminariam Botanicum, [Botanical Seminar]) becomes a robust student organization that engages students and faculty in true research and presentation, along the way developing some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century.

Bessey thrice served as interim chancellor. Over a 45-year career, he taught more than 4,000 and 800 are said to have made significant contributions to the sciences. All branches of the plant sciences family tree at Nebraska lead back to Bessey, who can be credited for directly mentoring scientists who developed the disciplines of plains ecology and range management, and who advanced the fields of agronomy, plant genetics, and crop physiology.

Kappa Kappa Gamma: The First Sorority

MAY 19, 1884

In May of 1884, the Sigma chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma was founded as the first sorority at Nebraska. Charter members are Edith P. Doolittle, Cora Ellen Fisher, Mary Letitia Jones, Alla Lantz, Sopha Myers and Adella Eugenia Stratton.

One of their first mentions in the Hesperian Student newspaper on June 2, 1884, is as follows: "The Kappa Kappa Gamma girls turned up the other morning with the dark and light blue conspicuously displayed."

The sorority now occupies an impressive brick house on 16th Street and S Streets.

George Howard joins faculty

SEPTEMBER 2, 1878

George Howard, Valedictorian of the Class of 1876, joins the Nebraska faculty as tutor of rhetoric, English literature and history. By January, he was given control of the library, which had to that point been a resource dedicated to faculty rather than students. Howard's first act was to give the library regular hours, open from two to six each afternoon, greatly increasing its use by students. At the first annual meeting of the Nebraska State Historical Society on January 23, 1879, $16 was allocated to construct a bookcase to hold the society's collection, to be held within the  university library at Howard's invitation; he would later serve on the society's board of directors.

In 1891, he would leave Nebraska for Palo Alto, as a member of the founding history faculty at the new Leland Stanford Junior University there; he would deliver that institution's second commencement address in 1893. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska in 1894, to which he would return in 1904 as Professor of Institutional History; he would lead the Department of Political Science and Sociology upon its formation in 1906. Described as "one of the great foundation stones of American social science" by the American Sociological Association, the widely-published Howard became the seventh president of the American Sociological Society in 1917.

The Louise Pound-George Howard Distinguished Career Award is today given annually to recognize distinguished service to the University.

Ellen Smith, first woman to join faculty

SEPTEMBER 13, 1877

With the beginning of the Fall Term, the faculty expands from ten to 13. One of the new three, Ellen Smith, becomes the first woman faculty member at Nebraska. Hired as an instructor in Latin and Greek, she was also principal of the law school until she was named registrar, a position she held from 1884-1902. And she was named “custodian of the library” during its move from University Hall to the new library (now Architecture Hall) in 1895. 

Smith was a formidable woman with a strong personality and apparently terrifying demeanor that earned her respect. 

Ellen Smith died six months after her summer 1902 retirement. In 1920, a Victorian-style home adjacent to campus at 14th and R streets used by the Dean of Women for women’s activities was renamed Ellen Smith Hall at the request of Nebraska alumnae. The building gave way in the 1950s for the current Administration Building. The current Ellen Smith Hall is part of the Harper-Schramm-Smith residence hall complex.

The first fraternity: Phi Delta Theta

MARCH 16, 1875

Phi Delta Theta is founded as the first fraternity on campus. Amos Grant, Willis Sweet and Clarence Rhodes are among the first members. 

The Phi Delta Theta pillars, according to their national chapter, are: "The cultivation of friendship among its members, the acquirement individually of a high degree of mental culture, and the attainment personally of a high standard of morality. Shortened, we refer to the principles as friendship, sound learning and rectitude."

Phi Delta Theta is today housed in a 1937 three-story Art Deco limestone building at 16th and R Streets.

The First Graduates

JUNE 25, 1873

In Spring 1873, the University produced its first two graduates. At ceremonies on Wednesday morning, June 25, each delivered orations: W.H. Snell on "The Evils of Anarchy," followed by J.S. Dales on "Lights and Shadows." Three more — Frank P. Hurd, Uriah H. Malick and Wallace M. Stevenson — were graduated in 1874. The five promptly formed an alumni association, the Associate Alumni of the College of Literature, Science and Art, which would become today's Nebraska Alumni Association.

There were no graduates in 1875, but there were five who earned baccalaureate degrees in 1876, including the first woman to graduate, Alice Frost, as well as Harvey Culbertson, George Howard, John McKesson, and Clarence Rhodes; two Master of Arts degrees also were conferred upon the graduates of 1873, Snell and Dales.

The twelve degrees awarded in these first four years of the university's life would be joined by 290,091 others by the time of Charter Day, 2019.

The Agricultural College is established

SEPTEMBER 12, 1872

The university's second major academic division, the Agricultural College, is established with the beginning of the Fall semester. It "furnishes a full course of instruction running through four years, or a partial course in practical agriculture, requiring one year."

The Hesperian Student publishes first issue

OCTOBER 1, 1871

Student-run media begins, with the publication of The Hesperian Student, just one month after the beginning of the first academic year in the life of the university. W.L. Sweet is editor, with associates Steptoe Kinney and Miss J.C. Kelly.

Under the motto "Qui non Proficit, Deficit" (he who does not advance, falls short), the content on this first front page is a collection of essays, polemics and poetry: What is the imagination? How to Judge Books. What is reason? The lofty enterprise of the university is reflected in its students' words, of particular interest is the opening essay under the title "BRAIN WORK." "As, when we look up to the evening sky, there are stars so dim that the eye cannot fix upon them, and we can only catch glimpses of them when we look at some point aside; so this transient vision is the best that men have ever had of mind— that subtle entity which has been so long studied and so little understood."

On page three, the editors saw fit to insert an item quoting Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the early women's rights activist, on whether women were fit for college study: "I would like to see you take thirteen hundred young men and lace them up, hang ten or twenty pounds' weight of clothes on their waists, perch them up on three inch heels, cover their heads with ripples, chignon-rats and mice, and stick ten thousand hairpins into their scalps; if they can stand all this, they will stand a little Latin and Greek."

The university, and its students and faculty, were off to the races. If Nebraska wasn't yet a great American university, the ingredients were there, even in that first month.

First Literary Society is formed

SEPTEMBER 15, 1871

On Sept. 15, only a week after the first classes had been held at the new university, the Palladian Literary Society was formed, under the motto "Forma Mentis Aeterna Est." Every Friday night, the Palladian would meet to debate and read their work aloud. Two years later, the rival Adelphian society was formed after a rift between "hay seeds" and "aristocrats" developed in the Palladian. 

Here is an excerpt from the 1884-1885 Palladian yearbook, describing their formative years: "The Palladian Society was organized early in the fall of 1871, but a few weeks after the opening of the University. Room No. 12, now occupied by the Medical Department, was assigned for its use, and both professors and students worked enthusiastically for the success of the new organization. The hall was at first barren of furniture, save rough chairs for the performers, and a deal table, behind which the debaters fortified themselves. Settees from the recitation rooms were brought in, to accommodate the bare walls and uncarpeted floor. Amid these rugged surroundings, the first Palladians began to train themselves in oratory and debate."

The Original College

SEPTEMBER 6, 1871

The original and first college at the University of Nebraska, the College of Ancient and Modern Literature, Mathematics and the Natural Sciences, opened in Fall 1871. It was never known by its formal name and always was called the College of Literature, Arts and Science. Today known as the College of Arts and Sciences, it is the largest college at Nebraska.

Allen Benton hired to lead University

JANUARY 7, 1871

On January 7, 1871, Allen R. Benton was hired as the first chancellor of the University of Nebraska. He began his work in Lincoln in June.

Chancellor Benton molded the original curriculum of the university. His ideal university emphasized classical education, with a focus on preparing students with courses in Latin, arithmetic and rhetoric. He also crafted the official university seal with the university motto encircling the open book at its center: “Literis Dedicata et Omnibus Artibus,” – Dedicated to Letters and all the Arts.”

Benton was devoted to the university, and once even gave $500 of his own salary to hire a professor after the Regents told him there were no funds available to hire new staff members. 

He resigned in 1876 after a grasshopper plague destroyed Nebraska crops, causing a drop in student enrollment and, critically for Benton, in Legislative support. 

Charter adopted; university established

FEBRUARY 15, 1869

The University of Nebraska was established by the Nebraska Legislature, taking advantage of the gift of 136,080 acres from the federal government to endow its creation. The original charter now resides in Love Libraries' Archives & Special Collections.

Excerpts from the charter:

Sec. 1st. Be It enacted by the Legislature of the State of Nebraska that there shall be established in this State an institution under the name and style of "The University of Nebraska."

Sec. 2d. The object of such institution shall be to afford to the inhabitants of this State, the means of acquiring a thorough knowledge of the various branches of literature, science and the arts.

Prologue: Nebraska admitted to Union

MARCH 1, 1867

Nebraska, having been reduced from its Nebraska Territory expanse between 1861 and 1863 (which included much of Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming) to fundamentally its current boundaries, becomes the 37th U.S. State.

The map in the background shows the the Nebraska of 1874, seven years after the state's admission to the Union and five years after the university was chartered; note the string of towns along the Union Pacific route in the Platte Valley, and along the Burlington route in the east, south of the Platte, including Lincoln.

Both railroads have strong Nebraska ties today, with Union Pacific's international headquarters in Omaha and Burlington, now BNSF Railway, wholly owned by Nebraska alum (Class of 1951) Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, also based in Omaha.

Prologue: Morrill Act Signed into Law

JULY 2, 1862

The endowment of federal lands through the Morrill Act, to provide funding for public universities, sets a national policy that higher education be available to all, at an affordable cost. A college education was no longer the sole purview of private and religious institutions, and it was more than training for vocations. The act was to "promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life."

Of the Act, its author, Vermont Congressman Justin S. Morrill said:
"This bill proposes to establish at least one college in every State upon a sure and perpetual foundation, accessible to all, but especially to the sons of toil, where all of needful science for the practical avocations of life shall be taught, where neither the higher graces of classical studies nor that military drill our country now so greatly appreciates will be entirely ignored, and where agriculture, the foundation of all present and future prosperity, may look for troops of earnest friends, studying its familiar and recondite economies, and at last elevating it to that higher level where it may fearlessly invoke comparison with the most advanced standards of the world."

Prologue: Homestead Act Promotes Nebraska Settlement

MAY 20, 1862

Nebraska Territory extended north to the Canadian border, including most of present-day Montana, when the Homestead Act was signed by President Abraham Lincoln in the spring of 1862. Native populations had existed on the land for millennia, but then-current concepts such as "manifest destiny" portended an endless stream of immigration. Under the Homestead Act, citizens and new immigrants alike could claim 160 acres on the promise of improvement, free and clear after five years. Many did; many came to Nebraska Territory and the most desirable lands in its south and east.

Within the first ten minutes of 1863, when the Act went into effect, Daniel and Agnes Freeman filed a claim on a quarter-section north of present-day Beatrice, Nebraska. It was the first claim under the Homestead Act, and is today the site of Homestead National Monument.

The Freemans would be the first of many. 45 percent of Nebraska's land, more than 22 million acres, would eventually be given to settlers under Homestead Act claims, the largest percentage of any state. Mostly European, they brought with them its cultures and intellectual life. The adjustment to the raw plain was difficult, but an ambition to recapture culture and educational advancement was retained. As more came and populations grew, new opportunities would present themselves.