Emporia State University

Emporia State University was established in 1863 as the state’s first school for training teachers. Although founded in 1863, the first term did not begin until February 15, 1865. The president of Kansas Normal School and its only teacher, Lyman Kellogg, taught 18 students on the second floor of the district school house. At the first commencement on June 28, 1867, Kellogg presented diplomas to Mary Jane Watson, a Civil War heroine, and to Ellen Plumb; the first, Judge Watson’s daughter and the second from Senator Plumb’s family. Kellogg saw to it that the Normal got off to an auspicious start before becoming a successful lawyer, honored judge, and Attorney General of Kansas. For 19 years after its inception, KSN struggled not only with drought, renegade buffalo hunters and revengeful Indians, but with depression, doubt, jealousy of location, and extreme lack of appropriations. By the time ESU’s fifth president, Albert R. Taylor, took charge, the school was in good condition with an enrollment of about 400, representing 43 Kansas counties and nine countries. Dr. Taylor took aggressive measures to increase enrollment such as refunding transportation mileage to students who lived in excess of 100 miles away. By 1889, KSN had become the largest school in the state and the largest normal school in the country. The school was first accredited in 1898, the same year it graduated its first black students. That same year, the Spanish American War interrupted the course of the school year. Over 35 percent of the first three Kansas regiments were school teachers, many of them from Normal.