April '24 Trivia Time!

This month's quiz is about higher education in the Ohio Valley

Welcome new subscribers! One monthly newsletter is devoted to Ohio River trivia, and always includes ten questions. It’s the rare person who can answer all ten correctly without a deep dive into each topic. Do your best and have fun while learning something new.

Before delving into the trivia questions, I’ll prime you for this month’s topic with historical background on higher education in the Ohio Valley.

• The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided for settlement and government of the territory and stated that “…schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” I talked about this when reviewing David McCullough’s book, The Pioneers.

• Before the Northwest Ordinance was approved by the Confederation Congress, a group of Revolutionary War veterans became land speculators by forming the Ohio Company of Associates. They used their Certificate of Indebtedness (an IOU for unpaid service during the war), to buy half a million acres of Ohio land near the mouth of the Muskingum River.

• “The appeal of this idea was that it offered to provide (a) a source of funds for the newly formed nation, (b) an opportunity for veterans of the Revolutionary War to get some value from the depreciated scrip in which they had been paid, (c) a scheme for orderly settlement of a frontier area, and (d) an opportunity for financial gain by the initial investors.” Source.

• “Provisions of the contract with the Confederation Congress included setting aside two townships in the center of the purchase for a university. These two townships were called ‘College Lands.’" Ohio University was established on them in 1808. Source.

  

  Screen grab of the OSU and OU mascots from a video promoting an event co-sponsored by Ohio State University and Ohio University alumni groups

QUESTIONS

Answers are in the footnotes.

1. In 1828, Ohio University conferred an A.B. degree on John Newton Templeton. What is Mr. Templeton’s historical significance ?¹

   1. He is the namesake of the Templeton Prize, which honors people whose works “affirm life's spiritual dimensions” with an award of over one million dollars. Past winners include Mother Teresa, physicist Freeman Dyson, and ethologist, conservationist, and activist Jane Goodall

   2. He was the first Black graduate of OU and the fourth Black man to graduate from a college in the U.S.

   3. Both

2. In 1873, Margaret Boyd received her B.A. degree and became the first woman to graduate from Ohio University. Soon after, the institution graduated its first international alumnus from which country?²

   1. France

   2. Turkey

   3. Japan

3. This Indiana college was established in 1801 by William Henry Harrison (the ninth U.S. President) while he served as governor of the Indiana Territory. It is now a university. Name that university.³

   1. DePauw University

   2. Valparaiso University

   3. Vincennes University

4. In 2004, four college students set out to steal several volumes of some of the world’s rarest books from the first educational institution west of the Alleghenies. This institution was established in 1780 by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and its rare books were valued at more than $5.7 million. Name the university.⁴

   1. Spalding University

   2. Transylvania University

   3. Tusculum University

5. Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act on July 2, 1862. The Act committed the federal government to grant each state at least 90,000 acres of public land (30,000 acres for every senator and representative in the state). States could sell these lands to benefit higher education by building new institutions or improving existing ones. Which Ohio River Valley institutions are recipients of the 1862 Morrill grants? (choose as many as apply).⁵

   1. Ohio University

   2. The Ohio State University

   3. University of Kentucky

   4. West Virginia University

6. “Who” were land-grant institutions designed to serve? (Choose all that apply)⁶

   1. “Sons and daughters of toil”

   2. Residents of states where training in agriculture, mechanical arts, and military science were largely unavailable

   3. Future farmers, teachers, and engineers

7. On Aug. 30, 1890, Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President of the United States, signed the Second Morrill Act of 1890 into law. This Act required states to either establish separate Land-grant Institutions for Black students or show that admission to a 1862 land-grant institution was not restricted by race. Which Ohio River Valley institutions received these funds? (choose as many as apply).⁷

   1. Kentucky State University

   2. West Virginia State University

   3. Lincoln University Missouri

8. Land-grant institutions were intended to emphasize pragmatic disciplines such as agriculture, science, and engineering without excluding classical studies. Riddle me this: if a land-grant university cuts majors or reduces faculty in foreign languages, public health, community planning, educational administration, and its math doctoral program (the only one in the state), is the university still aligned with the intent of the land-grant act? (choose as many as apply).⁸

   1. According to West Virginia University’s President, Gordon Gee, it is.

   2. Perhaps it aligns, but it doesn’t pass the sniff test.

9. How did the federal government acquire the land used to finance land-grant universities?⁹

   1. Native American tribes, as ceded through treaties and agreements

   2. Native American tribes, through seizure

   3. Both a. and b.

10. Ohio State University (OSU) Professor Stephen Gavazzi has written two books on land-grant universities. Soon after publishing the 2021 book, he learned that 600,000 acres from 108 different Indian tribes and bands lands were taken and sold to fund OSU. Which of these states did this land come from? (choose all that apply)¹⁰

    1. Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin

    2. Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska

    3. Florida, Mississippi

    4. California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington

Dr. Stephen Gavazzi's two books on land-grant universities

The answers are in the footnotes. Good luck!

Intermission Message

I’m on a research trip with the Filson Historical Society’s Northwest & Indigenous Revolution Tour. I’ll meet local experts, architectural historians, artisans, and curators at the conjunction of the Ohio River Valley at the Mississippi River Valley. Follow my daily highlights on Instagram.

ANSWERS

1. b. John Newton Templeton was born a slave in 1805 and freed in 1813. He was an educator and co-edited "The Mystery" a black newspaper. The Templeton Prize is real, but I found no connection between it and John Newton Templeton.

2. c. Saki Taro Murayama of Japan earned a degree from OU in 1895. Sorry, but I couldn’t find mention of which degree was granted.

3. c. Vincennes. Note the careful wording of this brag: Vincennes University is the oldest institution of higher education "west of the Alleghenies and north of the Ohio." Perhaps the trustees at Ohio University and Vincennes University collaborated on their historical status statements, since Ohio University was established as a university, while Vincennes predates OU but was established as a college. While I was digging around on the subject, I found another “first” statement about higher ed in the old Northwest Territory by The University of Michigan Ann Arbor (founded in 1817) celebrating its status as the first public university in the Northwest Territories. Bragging rights are important, folks. Maybe they are part of university recruitment strategies.

4. Transylvania University (b). Details of the art heist here. “At the height of its influence, during the first quarter of the 19th century, Transylvania rivaled both Harvard and Yale. It was one of the leading universities in the country in terms of enrollment, faculty, and resources for medical education under the presidency of Horace Holley. Many distinguished men studied at Transylvania including Jefferson Davis, Albert Sidney Johnston, John Hunt Morgan, Stephen Austin, Cassius Clay, John Cabell Breckinridge, and many others.” Source.

5. The correct answers are b, c, d because Ohio University (a) did not receive funding from the Morrill Land Grant Colleges Act of 1862 Source.

6. Technically, the answer is a. and b. If you chose all three, take the credit. Although “teachers” were not explicitly mentioned, land-grant institutions could provide training in some of the liberal arts and teaching through the wider mandate of “(promoting) the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes.” Here’s a comprehensive video on land-grant institutions.

7. The correct answers are a and b. Lincoln University Missouri is not in the Ohio Valley Region.

8. Both a and b. Excellent long-form article covers this and more at The Atlantic. Here’s an in-depth interview with the author of that article.

9. Sadly, the answer is c. According to a long and respected report on High Country News, “The United States took nearly 11 million acres of land from approximately 250 tribes, bands and communities through over 160 violence-backed treaties and land cessions. The Morrill Act of 1862 granted that land to states to be sold for the benefit of fledgling universities; altogether, it would raise nearly $18 million for 52 institutions by the early 20th century.

“To claim a share of Morrill Act lands, universities had to agree to conserve and invest the principal raised from their sale. Eastern, Southern and some Midwestern states received vouchers for lands out West, while Western states and territories selected land inside their borders.  

“In the course of a two-year investigation into how the United States expropriated nearly 11 million acres of Indigenous lands to build today’s celebrated land-grant university system, High Country News found that at least 16 land-grant universities in the West and Midwest—nearly a third of the schools in the system—still retain more than a half-million acres.” Source.

10. I hope you got this one, because it’s all of them. Source. To OSU’s credit, the university is deeply engaged with these Indian communities in trying to forge a path forward. To date, roughly $250,000 has been allocated to this program. Details here.