TABLE OF CONTENTS

Overview of the Collection

Historical Background

Scope and Contents

Arrangement

Restrictions

Index Terms

Detailed Description/Box and Folder Listing

Board of Trustees Minutes and Reports

An inventory of the collection in the college archives

Historical Background

In 1845, at their annual meeting the Illinois Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) expressed a desire to establish an academy strictly for the higher education of women. The philosophy of public education for women in the United States at that time generally ignored the necessity of educating females destined "only" to become wives and mothers. Of the Methodist Episcopal Church leaders, erudite Dr. Rev. Peter Akers, head of the Education Committee for the Illinois Conference, had already established his Ebenezer Manual Labor School in Jacksonville to evangelize to and educate Native Americans. During the year following the 1845 conference, Akers and other prominent preachers in the conference, Peter Cartwright, and Cartwright's son-in-law, W. R. Trotter, worked a plan for a girls school that they presented as a resolution in the annual meeting in Paris, IL in September 1846 for the establishment of an academy in Jacksonville. With the assistance of several of Jacksonville's community leaders, the Illinois Conference Female Academy was organized in the basement of the Jacksonville East Charge MEC, today known as Centenary United Methodist Church.

The first trustees of the school met monthly to recruit, enroll and devise a financial plan to administer and open the school within a year of the passage of the resolution. The academy's first president, Rev. James Jaquess, was just one of five presidents in its early years to be an active minister in the conference. The conference eventually placed sole control of operating and funding the school to the appointed president and elected trustees. Without direct aid from the conference, lofty building plans, the paucity of financial support, the Civil War, and three devastating fires in Main kept the academy in dire straits for decades until Dr. Joseph Harker, a self-educated, visitonary became the school's seventh president.

Following several names changes in the early years, Harker recharted the name of the school Illinois Woman's College (now co-education MacMurray College) and set out to establish an endowment for tuition scholarships and expansion of curriculum to accredit the college as a four-year degree-granting college. Up until his administration, no president ever made an official report to the Illinois Conference membership at their annual meeting in the fall concerning activities or enrollment. Reporting was left to the conference-appointed agents, whose duties included the raising of funds and promoting the school. Harker met with the college's trustees on a regular basis, wrote the minutes, and directed the day-to-day administration. In 1925, the newly appointed Dr. Clarence McClelland published his annual report to the board in the local newspaper as well in pamphlet form for distribution.

The Board of Trustees met annually until 1953 when they adopted a fall and spring meeting, eventually setting the current schedule to October, February, and May. The number of sitting members of the board has changed over the years as well as the composition of its members. The board is composed of alums, lifetime members, and men and women from diverse professional backgrounds with limited terms. They are charged with overseeing the success of the school and overseeing the authority of the office of the president.

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Scope and Contents

The minutes reveal the successes and hardships the board members and presidents have experienced since 1846 and their decisions regarding the school's operartions. Missing are the years 1858-1861, and 1912-1925. The minutes for 1846-1858 and 1861-1912 are handwritten in leather-bound books and have Dr. Harker's penciled notations throughout, presumably while he was writing his history of the college. In 1925 Dr. McClelland printed his annual report in booklet form and these were bound as books. In 1961, the minutes are typescript, some original documents, some mimeographed copies and compiled in folders by school year.

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Arrangement

The collection is arranged chronologically and will be added to as minutes are transferred to the archives.

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Restrictions

Restrictions on Access

The collection is unrestricted. However, due to the age and condition of the records, photocopying and reproduction scanning is prohibited for the bound volumes 1846-1858 abd 1861-1912.

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Index Terms

This record series is indexed under the following controlled access subject terms.

Persons:

Organizations:

Places:

Subjects:

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Detailed Description/Box and Folder Listing