East Texas Baptist University
Marshall, Harrison County, Texas
Marker Inscription
SECONDARY EDUCATION IS A FAMILIAR INSTITUTION IN MARSHALL WITH ACADEMIES DATING BACK TO THE 1840s. DURING A 1911 BANQUET FOR DONORS TO THE NEW SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY, DR. WILLIAM T. TARDY, THE PASTOR OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, WAS PRESENT. INVITED TO OFFER REMARKS, HE URGED THE METHODISTS TO BEGIN A COLLEGE IN MARSHALL. IN RESPONSE, THE METHODIST LEADERS PROMISED SUPPORT FOR A BAPTIST COLLEGE IF DR. TARDY WOULD UNDERTAKE IT. IN 1912, THE CHARTER FOR THE COLLEGE OF MARSHALL WAS SEALED FOR A TWO-YEAR SCHOOL, OR JUNIOR COLLEGE. DR. TARDY NEGOTIATED THE PURCHASE OF 100 ACRES OF THE ORIGINAL K.M. VAN ZANDT PLANTATION. FIFTY ACRES WERE TO BE SOLD TO PAY OFF THE NOTE. THIS ALONG WITH NUMEROUS DONATIONS, COMMUNITY FUNDRAISERS AND SUPPORT FROM THE BAPTIST GENERAL CONVENTION OF TEXAS HELPED RAISE FUNDS TO ERECT EDUCATIONAL BUILDINGS ON CAMPUS. UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF THE FIRST PRESIDENT, THURMAN C. GARDNER, MARSHALL HALL, AN EDUCATIONAL FACILITY WITH A GYMNASIUM, LABORATORIES, LIBRARY, OFFICES AND CLASSROOMS, WAS COMPLETED IN 1916. THE FIRST FRESHMAN CLASS REGISTERED IN 1917 AND, BY THE 1918-1919 ACADEMIC YEAR, AROUND 300 STUDENTS WERE ENROLLED. BY THE 1920s, DORMITORIES ENCIRCLED THE CAMPUS QUADRANGLE. AN ADDITIONAL 43 ACRES WERE PURCHASED IN 1935, INCLUDING THE LAND AND BUILDINGS OF THE ST. JOSEPH’S BOYS INDUSTRIAL ORPHANAGE, SOME OF WHICH WAS CONVERTED TO MEN’S HOUSING. DURING WWII, ENROLLMENT DROPPED SEVERELY BUT THE COLLEGE SAW A VIGOROUS POSTWAR ENROLLMENT AND BUILDING BOOM. IN 1944, THE COLLEGE CHANGED ITS NAME TO EAST TEXAS BAPTIST COLLEGE AND WAS AUTHORIZED TO OFFER BACHELORS’ DEGREES, AND, IN 1984, IT WAS RENAMED EAST TEXAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY. THE UNIVERSITY CONTINUES TO SERVE THE HONORABLE GOAL FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN EAST TEXAS.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Marshall had schooled its children in private academies since the 1840s when, at a 1911 banquet, Baptist pastor William T. Tardy challenged local Methodists to help start a college—and they promised support if the Baptists would build one. The College of Marshall opened as a junior college in 1912 on land carved from the old Van Zandt plantation, growing to some 300 students by 1918. Renamed East Texas Baptist College in 1944 and university in 1984, it still serves East Texas today.
Why it matters
The school's founding shows how denominational rivalry and civic ambition combined to plant institutions of higher learning across the early-twentieth-century South.
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Related people
- · William T. Tardy
- · Thurman C. Gardner
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Van Zandt Hill
Marshall, TX
Isaac Van Zandt was one of the young Republic of Texas's most capable men — a lawyer, legislator, and diplomat who served as chargé d'affaires to the United States during the delicate years before annexation. His campaign for governor was cut short in 1847 when yellow fever killed him, and he was buried in the family plot on this Marshall hilltop. Decades later the land became the campus of the College of Marshall, which grew into East Texas Baptist College.
Marshall Hall
Marshall, TX
Marshall Hall is the oldest building on the campus of what is now East Texas Baptist University, born of a 1912 community drive to establish a Southern Baptist college in East Texas. Trustees bought 100 acres of the former Van Zandt plantation, and Waco architect George Burnett designed the four-story hall in a blend of Jacobean-Tudor and neoclassical styles, promising a structure "thoroughly modern and strictly fireproof." Completed in 1916 and occupied by students in 1917, it housed offices, laboratories, a library, gymnasium, and chapel-theater.
The Allen House
Marshall, TX
The Rev. Walker Montecue Allen, an Alabama-born Cumberland Presbyterian minister, author, and teacher, moved to Marshall in 1876 with his wife Eliza Ann and their nine children. Three years later he and his older sons did most of the carpentry and masonry to raise this two-story house in the late Greek Revival style. The Allen family lived here until 1942, a span of more than six decades under one roof.
Bethesda Baptist Church
Marshall, TX
In 1867, just two years after emancipation, the Rev. William Massey gathered a congregation in his own home, naming it "Bethesda" for the biblical pool of healing. Its members grew into prominent business, educational, and political leaders and helped found Bishop College in 1881. Through a razed first building, a brick replacement, and a devastating 1953 fire, the congregation rebuilt again and again, raising the present structure under the Rev. James R. C. Pinn.