Happy Founder’s Day, Oberlin College!
187 years ago on December 3, 1833, the Oberlin Collegiate Institute (name changed to Oberlin College in 1850) opened for its first class. The campus looked much different than it does today, and would have looked similar (and even smaller) to the partial view of Oberlin (watercolor by H. Alonzo Pease, 1838) in the top image.
Oberlin’s campus included the Historic Elm (second photograph), which local legend states that Oberlin’s founders John J. Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart knelt under and saved from being chopped down due to its divine symmetry and beauty. The elm tree was located near Oberlin’s first log cabin. The Historic Elm was cut down in 1965 due to Dutch Elm disease, but we have a slice of it here in the Archives!
The third image is the first newspaper advertisement for the Oberlin Collegiate Institute, autumn 1833. This includes a description of the Manual Labor Department, and how it would be integrated into the collegiate education experience, and not separated as it was at other institutions. This ideal is where Oberlin’s motto, “Learning and Labor,” was inspired from.
The last image contains the title page of the first catalogue of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute, published almost a year later in November, 1834. Included in the list of trustees are Oberlin’s founders, Shipherd and Stewart. At this time, a president of the institute had not yet been chosen.
For more information about Oberlin College, including its namesake, check out Oberlin’s Namesake: John Frederick Oberlin (1740-1826), and A History of Oberlin College: From its Foundation to the Civil War, by Robert S. Fletcher (1943) online.
Happy birthday, Oberlin!
