The William Jewell college story

Baptist History and Heritage, Summer-Fall, 1999 by David O. Moore

What is a college?" President Walter Pope Binns used to ask his audience at an annual function in Kansas City. He would proceed to answer his question by saying a college is its faculty and their students. I propose to take the question and view it in historical reflection. I will ask, What's a college?--this college where we now sit, this William Jewell's jewel.

The Fruition of a Frontier Dream

When Jewell became a college, Kansas City was not yet a chartered town. When Governor Austin King signed the Jewell charter, 27 February 1849, all lands to the west were Indian Territories. Within ten miles of where we sit, wagon trains were being outfitted for the Santa Fe Trail and even Liberty was known as Baxter's Landing on the Missouri just a couple of miles away.

John Mason Peck, the Baptist missionary, who was everywhere west of Philadelphia in the late 1700s, states that Baptists had made their way to the Missouri Territory near present St. Louis by 1789. Some fifty non-Catholics residing near Jackson south of St. Louis formed the first Baptist church west of the Mississippi River 19 July 1806.

That same year, Lewis and Clark were exploring the area along the tributaries of the Western Missouri. Soon communities began to appear along the banks of this great river. In and near these settlements, frontier farmer-evangelists preached and Baptist churches came into being. Within these small fellowships were individuals who possessed a zeal for evangelism and who also pressed for the education of their brethren. A leader in this early effort among Baptists was Thomas Fristow of Howard County, who was joined by Ebinezer Rogers and Fielding Wilhoit. In their efforts, they were soon joined by a frontier physician, Dr. William Jewell, who had moved west from Lexington, Kentucky. Jewell was a Virginia transplant brought to Kentucky by his parents in 1799. Following study at Transylvania College, he read medicine with a local physician and began a practice in Lexington. Unmarried, the yearn to travel west led him to join an immigrating group that eventually settled in Boone County, Missouri. Here he was influenced to join Fristow, Wilhoit, and Rogers in their efforts at evangelism and education. These four worked tirelessly to establish the Baptist General Association, and from this group came the founding of William Jewell College.

Dr. William Jewell was both energetic and a visionary. He found time to be engaged in city governmental planning and politics, in architecture as well as building supervision, and he constantly pushed for formation of educational institutions. He laid out the street plaits for the city of Columbia, Missouri; designed and supervised the construction of the courthouse there and the Baptist church adjacent to it; served as mayor of his town and represented his district in the legislature. He participated in the development of a public hospital in St. Louis while he worked for building Columbia College, which later became the University of Missouri.

William Jewell was a man of great integrity. Accused once, by a member of his Little Bonne Femme church, of being dishonest in dealing with his patients, he called his accuser a "quack." Dismissed for disrupting the fellowship, Jewell later apologized and was restored. However, further accusation brought another strong rebuttal, and he refused to apologize and left the congregation. In 1823, he joined a group in organizing a new church in Columbia, only five miles removed from Bonne Femme, where he retained his membership until his death.

In the late 1830s, several pastors seriously pushed the Baptist General Association to consider establishing "a college among us." In 1843, Dr. Jewell offered a handsome grant of 3,951 acres of river bottomland, valued at more than $10,000, for this purpose. It came to nought, however, for failure to secure enough money for the project. Once again in 1847, the proposal came forward and in 1848, $16,000 was raised to accompany the Jewell offer. With this the General Association approved asking the state legislature for a charter. This being granted and signed by the governor, 27 February 1849, William Jewell College was born.

This charter contained interesting and unique parts. Among them was the right of perpetual succession of the trustees with the right of electing their own replacements; all professors and staff personnel, as well as the president, would be selected by the trustees who would also prescribe the courses of study; no taxes could be levied against lands or buildings used for the benefit of education at the school; and the charter could only be changed by an act of the legislature signed by the governor. This charter has never been amended nor is it likely ever to be.

A site for the new college was chosen in August 1849. After strong debate from various groups about competing locations, two non-Baptists from Liberty were successful in gaining the votes necessary to locate the college in Clay county. At this meeting Col. Alexander W. Doniphan pulled from his coat pocket a resolution naming the school after the venerable Dr. William Jewell. The doctor was asked, in 1850, to design and supervise construction of the first building on campus. He did this so arduously that in the summer of 1852 he suffered a massive heat stroke and died August 7 in the home of a friend. Thus, a place was chosen, a building constructed, but President Binns's college was still being born, since no faculty and no students were yet on hand.