Original Site of Southwestern University

🏛️The era

Texas Methodists took education seriously early on. Before the Civil War they founded four colleges: Rutersville College in 1840, Wesleyan College in 1844, McKenzie Institute in 1848 and Soule University in 1856. Like many small denominational colleges in the antebellum South, they struggled. Money was scarce, enrollment was unsteady, and the war drained them of both students and resources.

After the war, during Reconstruction, Texas was rebuilding its institutions and its economy. Many church leaders concluded that one strong central university would serve the church better than several weak, scattered schools. That was the idea behind consolidating them.

Towns also saw colleges as prizes. A school brought students, faculty, money and prestige, and communities across Texas competed to attract one. Georgetown, a county seat on the edge of the Hill Country north of Austin, was among the towns that went after the Methodists' planned university.

👥People & events

The central figure is the Reverend Dr. Francis Asbury Mood (1830-1884). He was named president of Soule University in Washington County in 1868, and soon after taking office he began planning to move the school and build a centralized Methodist university. His name itself is a tribute to Francis Asbury, the pioneering early American Methodist bishop.

At about the same time, Georgetown's civic leaders were working toward a college of their own. John J. Dimmitt and G. W. Glasscock, Jr., donated this site for the purpose. What opened here in 1870 was a community school, not the hoped-for college, but the land was ready for something larger.

The opportunity came when Georgetown entered the competition for the Methodist university. In 1873 this property was chosen, and in 1875 the new institution received a union charter joining it to the four earlier colleges, under the name Southwestern University. Mood led it until he died.

The campus grew around its first home, adding a school for young ladies, a chapel, a boys' dormitory called Giddings Hall and a gymnasium. In 1900 the university moved to its present campus, but it kept running a preparatory department on this ground until 1916.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Because of that 1875 union charter, Southwestern traces its lineage back to Rutersville College in 1840. On that basis it calls itself the oldest university in Texas. The claim depends on how you count a chain of predecessor schools, and other Texas institutions have their own claims to being first. Either way, the ties to Rutersville place its roots in the days of the Republic of Texas.

The story also fits a national pattern. In the nineteenth century, American religious denominations founded hundreds of colleges, many of which failed or merged. Consolidating weak schools into one stronger institution, as the Texas Methodists did here, is how many of today's lasting private colleges came to be.

Finally, the site shows how a town could shape its own future. Georgetown's leaders donated land, opened a school and competed for a university. That kind of civic ambition built college towns all across the country.

🧭If you visit

This is the ground where Southwestern University first took shape, not its present campus. As you stand at the marker, try to picture the early campus the inscription describes: a school for young ladies, a chapel, Giddings Hall for the boys and a gymnasium. For a time it was the center of Methodist higher education in Texas.

Then go see where the story led. Southwestern's present campus is also in Georgetown, so you can easily visit both and see how a donated plot and a small community school grew into an established university.

Georgetown is an easy trip north of Austin, and its historic downtown square is a pleasure to walk. Visiting the original site, the square and the present campus makes a satisfying half-day for anyone interested in Texas history or the history of American education.