McMurry College

🏛️The era

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, churches were among the most energetic builders of colleges in America. Before public universities spread widely, denominations founded schools to educate ministers, teachers, and the children of their members. In Texas, the Methodist church alone founded nearly eighty colleges between 1840 and 1920, though many were small and short-lived.

West Texas was still a young region in those years. Abilene itself had been founded in 1881 along the new Texas & Pacific Railway and grew as a hub for ranching and farming country. By the early 1900s, its residents were eager to build the institutions that marked a settled, ambitious community, and higher education was high on that list.

The years around 1920 were a time of change. The First World War had just ended, and many small colleges across the country were struggling financially. In the Northwest Texas Conference of the Methodist church, four colleges had closed by 1920. Rather than give up, church leaders looked to start fresh with a new school, and Abilene, already home to other church-affiliated colleges, made a promising site.

👥People & events

The central figure in McMurry's founding is the Reverend James Winford Hunt, whose path to the college presidency was anything but conventional. Before entering the ministry, Hunt published newspapers in Lubbock and Plainview. In 1903 he became a Methodist circuit rider, following the old tradition of preachers who traveled to serve scattered congregations.

In 1914 Hunt was called to St. Paul's Church in Abilene. Two years later he became president of Stamford College, and when that school closed in 1918, he returned to St. Paul's. By 1920 he was ready for a new calling: he resigned his pulpit to promote a new college, having been appointed commissioner for the project.

Hunt found overwhelming support in Abilene. In March 1921, a fund drive was launched to coincide with a visit from Bishop William Fletcher McMurry, the conference's presiding bishop. The next month the church Board of Education elected trustees, made Hunt president, and named the school McMurry College in the bishop's honor.

After that, things moved quickly. The charter was filed with the state on November 26, 1921, construction began in 1922, and faculty were chosen the following spring. On September 19, 1923, McMurry College officially opened its doors, the result of a community campaign and one determined former newspaperman.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

McMurry College is part of one of the great stories in American education: the role of religious denominations in building colleges across the country. From colonial New England to the frontier West, churches founded schools that opened higher education to communities that might otherwise have had none. Many leading American colleges began this way.

The school's founding also shows the persistence of that tradition in the face of failure. Small denominational colleges often struggled and closed, as several in the Northwest Texas Conference had. Instead of retreating, the church and the people of Abilene pooled their resources to build again, and this time the college endured.

Abilene's own story shows how colleges helped shape growing western towns. A city founded on a railroad within living memory was, by the 1920s, investing in education as a pillar of its future. Today Abilene is known for its several universities, and McMurry is part of that legacy of a town that bet on learning.

🧭If you visit

The marker stands in Abilene, where the institution Hunt founded still operates today as McMurry University. Walking the campus gives you a sense of a school that grew from a 1920s fund drive into a lasting part of the city's life.

As you look around, think about the speed of it all: from fund drive to opening day in about two and a half years. Imagine the first faculty and students arriving in the fall of 1923, in a West Texas town that had existed for only about four decades.

Abilene makes a good base for exploring the history of West Texas, with other historic sites, museums, and markers that tell the story of the railroad, ranching, and settlement. If you visit the campus, remember it is an active place of study, so be courteous and check for any visitor guidelines before exploring.