Notes
On July 13, 1787, the United States Congress passed the Ordinance for the Government of the Northwest Territory, the frontier lands newly evacuated by the British after the American Revolution (including future Indiana). Its third article declared, “Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged.” President John Adams signed into law the congressional act that specifically created Indiana Territory, effective July 4, 1800. In 1816, President James Madison signed a law welcoming Indiana as the nineteenth State, effective December 11, 1816, and part of that same law mandated “one entire township, which shall be designated by the President of the United States...shall be reserved for the use of a Seminary of learning.” Madison selected a township in southern Indiana, to which settlers moved and created Monroe County in 1818 (named in honor of current President James Monroe). The county seat Bloomington was established the same year.
A location was selected for the new seminary, on what is now Seminary Square, and on January 20, 1820, the Indiana State Legislature passed the law creating Indiana State Seminary to be located there. The land was purchased, the first buildings built, and on April 4, 1825, the seminary doors were opened for the first time, as ten young men became its first students. On January 24, 1828, the state legislature renamed it Indiana College, and leadership was sought. Andrew Reddick Wylie was selected as its first President in the fall of 1829 and moved to Bloomington. Indiana’s first degrees were awarded in 1830, as the first four graduates received their diplomas, three of whom had been in continuous attendance since the first day. All were bachelor degrees. On February 15, 1838, the legislature again renamed it Indiana University, and it has remained such ever since.
As a result, “Indiana State Seminary,” “Indiana College,” and “Indiana University” are used throughout the first 200 biographies.
While Sarah Parke Morrison is well-known as IU’s first female student, graduating in 1869, she is not actually the first female student of the institution now known as Indiana University. In 1852, and upon the suggestion of the faculty, a committee recommended to the state legislature that a normal seminary be established for students, regardless of gender. This Normal Department for the training of teachers was for men, and a “model school, subservient to the normal school,” would educate the female students.
In its inaugural year, the Normal Department enrolled thirty-seven students. Fifteen of these students were female. Sadly, records of these students have been lost, presumably in the fires of 1854 or 1883.
In 1854, the resolution to establish a separate Female Department of the Normal Department was rescinded. Although a resolution was then passed to create the Monroe County Female Seminary, the institution never came to fruition. The Normal Department was disbanded in 1856, followed by the Model School in 1857.
A decade later, the university began admitting women to study alongside men. In 1867, Sarah Parke Morrison presented a petition to the Board of Trustees to change the laws of the institution to allow the enrollment of women with the “same footing as the males.” Upon review of the bylaws, no explicit prohibition of the admission of women was discovered and therefore it was determined that women were entitled to these same rights and privileges as men.
Morrison’s matriculation opened the doors, and additional women were admitted to the university. Before the end of her second term of study, twelve female students were enrolled at Indiana University.