[Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a yearlong, bi-weekly series looking at the history of the university in honor of its 150th anniversary celebration.]
Handing over their $125 down payments, four brothers were the first to register for class at the Maryland Agriculture College in October 1859, enrolling in four years of farm training and a carefully regulated lifestyle that required daily prayers and prohibited alcohol.
It was the first year that the University of Maryland’s earliest incarnation accepted students, the first four being the sons of its founder, Charles Benedict Calvert. There were just 30 other students they could recruit to attend the college.
The college was one of the first public institutions of higher education in the country, emphasizing both classical and practical educations.
Now, 150 years later as the university welcomes 4,050 in its freshman class, it is also celebrating its sesquicentennial, marking the signing of the charter for the Maryland Agricultural College in March 1856 and how far it has come since that day in October of 1859.
GETTING OFF THE GROUND
The college was chartered on March 6, 1856, after a group of wealthy planters led by Calvert, a descendant of the founder of the Maryland colony, saw a need to educate farmers in practical agriculture.
Calvert and his brother sold 428 acres of land from his own plantation, Riverdale, to start the college. Since that time, the university has grown to 1,382 acres, including off-campus areas the university is responsible for maintaining, according to university statistics.
The Maryland Agricultural College was the third institution of its kind, after Pennsylvania State University and Michigan State University were chartered one year prior, both for agricultural purposes.
The Maryland General Assembly approved the charter, provided the trustees raised $50,000, a trifling sum in modern terms when twice that amount was raised in donations just for last year’s Maryland Day celebration, according to a report to the University Senate by university President Dan Mote in April.
The college received an annual state appropriation of $6,000, according to university historian and former history professor George Callcott’s book, The University of Maryland at College Park, A History. Accounting for inflation, in today’s currency, that would amount to about $119,000.
In comparison, the state gave the university $306.1 million in appropriations for this fiscal year.
Callcott said the original intent of the college was not to serve just Maryland students, despite the state funding.
“Calvert had friends all over the country, and he appealed to his friends to send their children to the agriculture college,” Callcott said. “It was state support for the idea of agricultural well-being much more than it was for the well-being of the state itself. [Calvert] was more concerned with agriculture than Maryland.”
‘GOOD MORAL CHARACTER’
Much like the current Honor Pledge, the 34 students in the college’s first incoming class were required to sign a pledge to follow rules and regulations according to the first circular of the Maryland Agricultural College, an informational booklet produced in July of 1859 now stored in the archives in Hornbake Library.
Students were also required to produce evidence to the faculty of their “good moral character,” which Callcott said could have involved recommendation letters from a student’s preacher.
When students arrived at the college, they were required to turn their money over to patrons, who doled out spending money as they saw fit. If students behaved, they were allowed to leave the campus every fifth Saturday, according to the college’s second circular, also available in the Hornbake archives.
Daily Scripture readings and Sunday Christian church services were required for all students.
The university banned sword-fighting, alcohol, tobacco and profane language. Students’ disciplinary records were sent to parents every five weeks.
Required courses included Latin, Greek, French, German, English and history, as well as a host of science courses that focused on knowledge that would benefit farmers. The university still teaches all of those subjects and more, offering students 111 majors from which to choose today.
SHORT TERM, LONG LEGACY
The board of trustees hired Benjamin Hallowell, a Quaker schoolmaster and anti-slavery proponent from Montgomery County, to be the college’s first president.
Hallowell left the school after just a month because the students gave him headaches, Callcott wrote, but his legacy was ensured by one demand upon his hiring.
“One of the conditions that President Hallowell placed as part of his employment was that no slave labor be used on campus, and the trustees acquiesced to that,” said Anne Turkos, university archivist.
But there were still remnants of slavery on the campus, as slave labor was used to build the Barracks, the college’s first and only building until well after the Civil War. The second building for student use was erected in 1892 and housed a gym and library.
Additionally, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Jacob Thompson, a speaker at the college’s dedication and Mississippi native, discussed the importance of a planter’s influence on his slaves in his address.
‘A MODEL FARM’
The Barracks, a five-story building where LeFrak Hall now stands, housed classrooms, dorms, administrative offices and other student facilities under one roof. The building was 32,400 square feet, less than one-third the size of the new Bioscience Research Building now under construction.
Dormitory rooms within the building, however, measured 12 feet by 23 feet, while typical double rooms in today’s high-rise buildings are 12 feet by 14 feet.
While people could see the new college’s potential, students and faculty alike kept the focus on agriculture.
“Though the land surrounding the structure is as yet unimproved, it is notwithstanding, very rich, and when properly cultivated will make in reality a model farm,” wrote the Baltimore American newspaper in its Oct. 6, 1859 issue.
TUITION CONCERNS
In 1859, it cost $250 per year to attend, including room and board, which would equal about $5,330 today, accounting for inflation.
Even then, concerns about tuition being too high were prevalent among the college’s critics.
“It was rather high, and the critics considered it aristocratic,” Callcott said. “The board [of trustees] argued, on the other hand, that they wanted excellence, and that cost money. Critics of the college were not people from the city; they were small farmers who disliked rich farmers.”
This began a 150-year legacy of concern about tuition prices as state and university leaders continue today to search for compromise between funding educational programs and allowing access to education for all.
Sept. 14: Part 2 of the series explores the effect of the Land-Grant Act, the national legislation that created opportunities for schools such as the Maryland Agricultural College to form
Contact reporter Adam Lewis at lewisdbk@gmail.com.
