York College
By Tim McNeese, Bev McNeese and Christi Lones
()
About this ebook
Read more from Tim Mc Neese
The Ancient World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Industrial Revolution Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Age of Absolutism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Revolutionary Spies: Intelligence and Espionage in America's First War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Middle Ages Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Modern World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsU.S. Constitution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Romans Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe World at War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Age of Napoleon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Age of Progress Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Arrival of the Mayflower: Pilgrims Sail to the New World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEarly North America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to York College
Related ebooks
Creating the South Caroliniana Library Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYork College of Pennsylvania Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUniversity of Tennessee Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSouthwestern College Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe School of the Art Institute of Chicago Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSt. Lawrence University Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPresbyterian College Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConverse College Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Randolph-Macon College Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNewark Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYorkville Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSaint Peter's College Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe City College of New York Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLincoln University: 1920-1970 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWilliam Carey University: Celebrating 125 Years Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Horseshoe: A Guide to the Historic Campus of the University of South Carolina Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5University of Arkansas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLexington Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUniversity Park, Los Angeles: A Brief History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRoosevelt University Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOttawa Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Importance of Being Urban: Designing the Progressive School District, 1890-1940 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGettysburg College Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Bear Tree and Other Stories from Cazenovia’s History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Catholic University of America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhen Did the Statue of Liberty Turn Green?: And 101 Other Questions About New York City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oxford Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCity College of San Francisco Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLegendary Locals of Moscow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWake Forest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
United States History For You
Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer: An Edgar Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Right Stuff Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for York College
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
York College - Tim McNeese
Archives.
INTRODUCTION
Today, it is still visible from a lonely satellite drifting through space. Go online to Google Maps. Type in the words York Nebraska
and enlarge the map until you can make out the roofs of the college’s buildings, some of which have stood for more than a century. Locate the Mackey Center on the east side and Hulitt Hall on the west. Now focus on the space between them, and a shadowy remnant of York College’s past appears dimly in the grass. It looks like a needle, a thin brown line, wide enough for an automobile, culminating on its northern end with an eye, a circle drive that once stood outside the southern dual entrances to Old Main, York College’s first and most expansive building. It was a grand old pile of bricks, towering up on East Hill, rising 110 feet from its foundations to the tip of its flagpole, a 45-star national emblem waving in a stiff Nebraska breeze above the grassy plains of the early 1890s. Old Main is gone now, having died a fiery death on a cold night in January 1951. That dim driveway, that needle, still points to something—a history and a place, one spanning psychic distance, its roots watered by faith, planted deep in the soil of York, Nebraska. How Old Main and the college it represented came to be is a story worth telling.
In 1870, York was little more than one lone house. Less than a decade had passed since the passage of the Homestead Act, American Indians still roamed within two days’ horse ride along the Oregon Trail, and the Transcontinental Railroad had just been completed the previous year. The railroad reached York in 1878, and the town sprang to life. Over the following dozen years, progress was planted on the Plains. Beyond a bank, a post office, dry goods stores, and a newspaper, a school was envisioned. In 1880, the Methodists opened theirs—the Nebraska Conference Seminary—with the literature describing their school as located in a thrifty section of the state, in a town where there never had been a saloon.
They set up shop in January in the original Congregational Academy building located on the west end of Seventh Street. (While the building is gone today, Academy Avenue remains.)
The school did well for a time, moving to a new brick facility located close to the site of today’s St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. (The building, now gone, would later house the Ursuline Sisters, an order of nuns, and even later still would become St. Joseph’s Academy.) The seminary became a college in 1883 and was renamed Methodist Episcopal College of Nebraska officially, but often the locals just simply referred to the school as if it were theirs—as York College. It boasted a dozen instructors and had an enrollment of 313 by 1885. Tuition ran between $6 and $7 per term. Many of the college’s students focused their studies on teacher education and business courses. But even as enrollment climbed, so did debts, and by 1888, the Methodists closed the doors, with the Catholic Church assuming control and reopening the facility the following year as Ursuline Academy. Meanwhile, the Methodists moved to Lincoln and opened a new school: Nebraska Wesleyan University.
With its first college
having come and gone within a single decade, the people of York sought out another religious group to establish a college in their prairie community. Land was selected for a college by local citizens on York’s East Hill—enter the United Brethren. In 1886, the United Brethren Church had purchased, from a group of Baptists, Gibbon Collegiate Institute, located in Gibbon, Nebraska, about 70 miles east of York. The academy there ran from 1886 until 1890, under the auspices of Western College, in Toledo, Iowa.
But Gibbon proved an awkward place for a college. The town was too small, and citizens never fully bought in. Financial problems were exaggerated by a severe drought that hit the region. Church officials decided to close the Gibbon school and move their operations to York when the Methodists had left. When the United Brethren opened their new school, they named it York College. Ironically, the United Brethren Congregation in York had been established just three years earlier.
It is from this time-distant place—York, Nebraska, in 1890—that the story begins to take on a life of its own, one, ultimately, of endurance; one that has seen fitful starts and stops; financial crises and historical drama; problems and praises. Over the next 125 years, York College would not only endure, but would thrive, progress, spread out, even as those offering its classes, raising its buildings, and guiding six generations of young men and women would themselves change, with each new generation of instructors, administrators, staff, students, alumni, and various and sundry well-wishers. The story of York College is, in some respects, two stories linked in purpose and place. The United Brethren would lay the groundwork for the college on the hill with 11 presidents steering the ship for more than 60 years. Those stalwart men of faith, relying on push and enterprise, built a school from scratch, and their efforts continue to bear fruit. To leave its leaders anonymous and unnamed would be amiss:
United Brethren Presidents of York College, 1890–1954
Those early decades brought new buildings, a wide variety of courses and academic programs, and sports teams. There were dramatic productions, literary societies, music, and traditions, some of which have remained a part of campus to today. The college’s first song, a theme written by C.W. Gwinn in 1905 (and later tweaked by Ethel Clarke), opens with confident lyrics: Come, let us sing together / A glad Triumphant song / To our own Alma Mater / With praises loud and long / The pansy is here emblem / Of every tint and hue / Her banner floating o’er us / Is the royal White and Blue.
Today, neither the pansy nor the song are a part of York College, but another song, one penned by Ruby Carol Rickard, remains as the college anthem, ever extolling loyalty