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Caption: Book - History of the University (Powell)
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Seminary and College Funds 167 "the general interest of education, and to qualify young men to engage in the several employments of society, and to discharge honorably and usefully the various duties of life." The last clause of section four of the law indicates that there were to be departments for the study of agriculture and the mechanic arts when the need of the community demanded. No funds or lands were given it by the state; these were to be collected by the corporation. It is interesting to note that this law, providing in a way for agricultural education, was passed nine months before Turner proposed his plan at the Granville meeting. Having no organized force back of it the college never developed into anything more than a paper institution. In 1852 the legislature passed an act creating an institution to be known as the "Illinois state university" and to be located in or near Springfield, Illinois. The act was entitled "An act to amend an 'Act to incorporate a literary and theological institution of the Evangelical church of the far west, to be located in Hillsboro, Montgomery county, Illinois,' approved January 22, 1847." This act creating the "Illinois state university" was in force June 21, 1852, and amended in minor ways by an act of Feb. 3, 1853. The amended act authorized the board of trustees, the number of which should not exceed thirty-one, to establish the university in or near Springfield and to "establish separate departments of the learned professions of the sciences and arts, including, besides the usual departments of theology, medicine, and law, a department of mechanical philosophy and also of agriculture, and shall assign to each department a competent faculty of instruction." It was required that instructors in the theological faculty should be appointed by the Evangelical Lutheran synod. The bill did not ask for an appropriation from the state and there was no reason assigned why this denominational institution should take the name of the "Illinois state university.'' The institution thus legally recognized had begun its operation in 1849, and had issued its first catalog in August, 1850. Its early work in Hillsboro, Montgomery county had been fairly successful, but believing a better field to be open in Springfield it moved there and changed the name to the "Illinois state univer- rm
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