THE WILBERFORCE UNIVERSITY.

T

HE Wilberforce University, located in Greene County, near Xenia, Ohio, cannot be considered one of the state educational institutions, except that it has been receiving state assistance in establishing and maintaining an industrial department since 1887. The University is for colored youth, and affords an opportunity for extending industrial training to colored youth, such as is not found in other institutions in the state.

The following brief history of this institution is a matter of historical value:

On September 28, 1853, the Cincinnati Conference of the M. E. Church selected a committee which recommended "the establishment of a literary institution of high order for the education of colored people generally;" and in May, 1856, "Tawawa Springs," a beautiful summer resort in Greene county, Ohio, was purchased, and Wilberforce University was organized. By concurrent action, the M. E. and A. M. E. Conferences of Ohio entered into co-operation for the success of the University. It was incorporated August 30, 1856, and a board of twenty-four trustees selected, including Governor Salmon P. Chase, President R. S. Rust, Ashland Keith, of the colored Baptist denomination, and D. A. Payne; and the broad principle adopted that there shall never be any distinction among the trustees, faculty or students, on account of race, color or creed.

The University began its work in October, 1856, under Rev. M. P. Gaddis, as principal. He was succeeded by Professor James K. Parker, and he by Dr. Richard S. Rust, the first president. During the first epoch, which terminated with the Civil War, the number of students, largely the children of Southern planters, varied from seventy to one hundred. Commendable progress was made in literary culture. The War closed the school, and the M. E. Church withdrew from the field.

On March 10, 1863, D. A. Payne purchased the property for $10,000, and associated with himself James A. Shorter and Professor John G. Mitchell, in the re-organizing of the University. It is the oldest college. for negroes in this country. Congress in 1870 appropriated $25,000; Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase bequeathed $10,000; the Charles Avery estate added $10,000, and the American Unitarian Association gave for lectures $6,000 to the University.

On March 19, 1887, the Legislature of the State of Ohio came to our aid, helping us in establishing a Normal and Industrial Department, and is appropriating now $17,000 per annum to the University. On January 9, 1894, President Cleveland detailed Lieutenant John H. Alexander,

The Wilberforce University.

a West Point graduate, to organize and instruct the Military Department of Wilberforce University, and the United States government is still maintaining this department. At the breaking out of the Spanish-American War, Wilberforce furnished some of the best negro soldiers that went to the front, a number of whom are fighting for the flag in the Philippines today.

The University has received from all sources since organization $513,202.80. Six thousand and six negro youths have attended the University, most of them coming from the South. Two hundred and sixtysix have graduated from our literary courses, and are now preaching and teaching in the South, striving to help solve the race question. Two hundred and ten have graduated from the Industrial Department, and are now engaged in the useful trades. It is the pride of the University that it has always been the aim and object to contribute her full share to the intellectual, moral, physical, and industrial uplift of the negro, and thereby assist in removing the standing menace to our American institutions-the race problem.

PART EIGHT.

MISCELLANEOUS.

HANNA MEMORIAL EXERCISES.

N April 20, 1904, the two Houses of the 76th General Assembly met in the hall of the House of Representatives, in memory of the life and services of Senator Marcus A. Hanna. Senator Charles Dick was orator of the day and delivered the following eulogy:

Mr. President and Members of the Seventy-sixth General Assembly:

Marcus A. Hanna was born September 24, 1837, in New Lisbon, Columbiana County, Ohio, and died in Washington, February 15, 1904, in the discharge of his duties as Senator from his native State.

Standing in the presence of this splendid representation of the citizenship of Ohio; impressed with the deep significance of this occasion, I am also reminded of the importance of events that go to make up the history of our commonwealth, and the character of the people who have maintained her standing in the front rank of the States which constitute our glorious and imperishable Union. In the light of these recollections, crowned with garlands, of achievement and duty well performed, stand the towering personalities of those sterling types of American manhood whose accomplishments during the last century have made the history of Ohio identical with that of the nation itself.

It is by no accident that Ohio has furnished so many distinguished sons to the nation, including Presidents, statesmen, military chieftains, lawyers, educators, authors, artists, inventors, scientists and captains of industry. The cause is found largely in the circumstances of her birth and development, and in the character of her early settlers.

If, as has been said, God sifted the whole world to find men worthy the high calling of founding a new nation, as truly may it be said that all the original States of the Federal Union contributed to the making of Ohio, the first State of the nineteenth century, the first new State formed out of national territory. Here converged nearly all the early lines of continental travel. Here came the Puritan and the Cavalier, the Scotch-Irish, and those of pure Teutonic and Gallic blood; Lutheran, Presbyterian Catholic and Quaker. Connecticut bounded the State on the north, and Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia on the south. New York, Pennsylvania and other States furnished generous contributions to her population.

Of the new States which preceded her into the Union after the Revolution, Vermont was the offspring of New York and New Hampshire, Kentucky of Virginia, and Tennessee of North Carolina. Ohio was the first State to which the entire Union contributed, the first national territory raised to statehood. All of the original States gave from their best citizenship to build up the first State carved out of the Northwest Territory. Massachusetts founded the first settlement at Marietta, Connecticut peopled the Western Reserve, a New Jersey colony laid the beginnings of Cincinnati, much of the best blood of the States was filtered through New York from New England, Pennsylvania was a liberal contributor, and Virginia reserved a large tract to which came many of her Revolutionary soldiers and their descendants. The abolition of slavery drew to Ohio some of the best blood of the far South. Here, therefore, came all nationalities and all creeds, and they found not tolerance merely but equality in the sight of the law. The early use of federal troops to repress Indian uprisings in the State accustomed her citizens to the exercise of national authority. This Indian warfare held captive in Ohio for a time the determined rush of Western migration. Thus time was given these diverse elements to coalesce into one harmonious whole, and to form a type of stalwart, intensely patriotic Americans.