The Y is Born at the Illinois Industrial University

[p. 1] Listed in The Student, predecessor of the Daily Illini, volume 1, No. 1 for November, 1871, along with the Illinois Central timetable and twelve student organizations was the “Students Daily Prayer Meeting.” The student organizations were the University Choir, String Band, Comet Band, Battalion of Illinois Cadets, Archimedean, Industrials, Recreators, Gymnastic Club, Althenai, Adelphic, Philomathean, and Student Government. Subsequent issues of The Student appearing in 1871 and 1872 announced: “Students prayer meeting, Meets every evening (Sundays excepted) at 6:30 P.M. in room 22. All are welcome.” Two new student organizations were listed in these issues—The Appolothemesians and the Glee Club. President of the Glee Club was E. Steele.

In the February, 1873, issue of The Student appeared this announcement:

“YMCA Organized February 3d, 1873. Social and business meetings on the second Tuesday of each month, at 7 p.m., in room No. 23. Regular prayer meetings, Mondays and Thursdays, at 6½ p.m., in the room above mentioned, and in the Adelphic Hall Sunday morning at 9 o’clock. President—E. Steele, Cor. Secretary—J. S. Romine, Rec. Secretary—C. Graham.

“YWCA, the ladies of the I.I.U. have organized a Young Women’s Christian Association. Regular business and social meetings held each month. Also regular weekly prayer meetings. The YWCA unite with the YMCA in Inaugural Exercises, Friday March 7th. The officers are: President—Miss E. L. Stanton, Recording Secretary—Miss F. Pierce, Corresponding Secretary—Miss M. F. Miltemore.”

The joint inaugural program of the YMCA and YWCA was held in the chapel of the University. Music was supplied by the Apollothemesians, the history of the association traced by Charles P. Graham, and the inaugural address delivered by Miss Ellen Stanton.

Thus the student prayer group which had been functioning for at least two years prior to 1873 was converted into a university YMCA. How did this come about? As always—through men. In this case two played leading roles. One was Edward Streiby Steele, an 1872 graduate of Oberlin who came to the Illinois Industrial University and taught elementary Latin, Greek, and English during [p. 2] the school year, 1872-73. The records on Steele are scanty. He was on the staff only one year, but he must have been active during that time having become the first president of both the Y and the university Glee Club.

The other leading role was played by Colonel Robert Weidensall, Civil War veteran, farmer, engineer, explorer, foreman in the Union Pacific car shops in Omaha, and founder of the Omaha YMCA. He was hired in 1869 by the national YMCA to organize new associations, especially in colleges. This he did with a will. Besides organizing city YMCAs, he visited during the years 1870-75 thirty-seven colleges. Out of this effort he netted twenty-four new college Christian associations, including the YMCA and the YWCA at the Illinois Industrial University. In his report to the International Committee meeting in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. late in 1873 he stated: “In the Illinois Industrial University (Champaign, Illinois) I organized two very promising associations—one among the young men and one among the young ladies.”

Weidensall was enthusiastic about the college YMCA and YWCA movement. He said, “Nothing gives me greater pleasure than to institute and organize religious work in the state schools of our country. . . . Sometimes we are met with an emphatic question in a dictatorial manner: ‘What right have you to form Young Men’s Christian Associations in state institutions?’ My answer to this question was usually, ‘Just the same right that you have to organize any society that is not in itself a part of the state schools. . . . If a number of Christian students decide to organize a Young Men’s Christian Association for their benefit, they have as good a right to do so as others have to organize a ball club or any other society so long as they do not violate the laws and regulations of such state institutions.’”

In a letter to the national office dated Champaign, Illinois, February 6, 1873, he states, “I have assisted in organizing four new associations in this neighborhood—two in towns nearby and two in the Illinois State Industrial University—one a young men’s and the other a young women’s association. Since I came to this state we have started twelve new organizations and witnessed the resurrection of several old ones. I have met some of the most excellent Christians here.”

On February 11, 1873, following Weidensall’s visit and organization of the YMCA, Edward S. Steele wrote: “We young people in whose behalf you have been laboring have thought it proper to make a slight acknowledgment of our indebtedness in a practical way. We hope that this sum, though it is small, will be of some assistance to you and the cause in which you are engaged. You will have to look higher than us for your great reward, but such things as these help while one stays in the world.” Enclosed with the letter was a gift of $11.00.

It is not clear whether the YWCA was formed on his February 3 visit or whether this occurred sometime later in the month of February. Another letter from Steele to Weidensall, dated also February 11, 1873, states, “If you will call at my room at half-past four on the Sabbath, I shall without much doubt, be able to introduce you to some of the Christian ladies of the University.” This would lead one to believe that the YWCA might have been created later in the month [p. 3] of February. It could not have been much later because its organization along with that of the YMCA was announced in the February issue of The Student, and joint inaugural exercises were held on March 7.

In his memiors Weidensall stated, “I was permitted to form two associations in the Illinois Industrial University at Champaign, Illinois. The time was ripe and the way was clear to organize these associations in that progressive school. After a hotly contested discussion upon the test of active membership, the Young Men’s Christian Association was formed on a true evangelical basis and has ever since continued so. The Young Women’s Christian Association that was formed at that time was the first Young Women’s Christian Association ever organized from its beginning with the true pattern of a Young Men’s Christian Association on a true evangelical basis. While it ceased to exist after several years, it accomplished a splendid work in the University. Miss Ellen L. Stanton of London, England, was the President of this association and Miss M. F. Miltemore of Janesville, Wisconsin, Vice President and Corresponding Secretary.”

The first State Convention of Illinois YMCAs was held in Bloomington, Illinois, November 8-9, 1873. Student representatives came from both the YMCA and the YWCA at the Illinois Industrial University. In reporting on two District Conventions held in Illinois the following year, the International Committee stated; “These two District Conventions saved the Illinois State work from almost certain failure. In both of these conventions the college association workers did much to save the state work.”

The “towns nearby” in which Weidensall reported that he had organized YMCAs while visiting the Illinois Industrial University were Champaign and Urbana. In his 1873 report he said: “At Morris, Lexington, Champaign, Charleston, and Dupage township, Will County where there had been protracted religious services and souls gathered into the church, I started general associations. At Urbana an association was formed in the Baptist Church.” On February 12, 1873, the Champaign County Gazette carried an item stating that the first regular meeting of the YMCA of Champaign was held in the Congregational Church, “The attendance was small but all the churches were about equally represented. A constitution was adopted and signed by eighteen persons.” The next day, on February 13, the paper carried an item: “The young men connected with the Baptist Church of Urbana have organized an institution which has long been needed here and which reflects great credit on their enterprise and Christian zeal. We refer to the organization of a YMCA.”

Weidensall’s efforts were not always successful. In reporting on a meeting at Northwestern University he says, “This meeting was held in one of the classrooms of the University building and was made up largely of students of the lower classes. It was an experiment and I do not think it amounted to very much as the students in the University were skeptical of the YMCA and told me that the institution did not need it. I told them that it did and that if they did not know it now, they would learn it in time. They did learn it.”

Some college YMCAs and YWCAs failed for lack of continued leadership [p. 4] and program. The YWCA at the Illinois Industrial University functioned for only a few years, though it was revived and reorganized in 1884.

The composition of the student prayer meeting group which Steele led into YMCA organization is not clear. Neither are the numbers participating though there are written references to “twelve students” and to “Mr. E. S. Steele, and a few students.” Steele was on the faculty for only one year. He returned to Oberlin and received a Divinity degree from the Theological Seminary in 1877. Following that he was a minister at Concord, Illinois, for one year and was in Harvard Divinity School for two terms, 1883-84 and 1886-87. He was president of the YMCA when it was organized and continued as president for the remainder of the school year.

In the Fall of 1873 The Student announcement regarding the YMCA listed Charles P. Jeffers as President, Richard H. Hannah as Recording Secretary, and James S. Romine as Corresponding Secretary. Leadership of the prayer meeting group prior to 1872 when Steele apparently assumed leadership, is also not clear though T. J. Burrill, an early member of the Illinois Industrial University faculty, botanist, administrator, researcher, and a “man for all seasons,” appears to have been involved with the early prayer meeting group as a faculty leader and sponsor.

Besides Steele, James S. Romine and Charles Peyton Graham, the first officers; Ira O. Baker, fourth president of the Association (1876-77) and later a leader in the YMCA program as a faculty member, and Charles Wesley Rolfe, later professor and head of the Geology department, were charter members.

Charles Peyton Graham, first recording secretary, class of 1873, became a Presbyterian minister. He was born in Kentucky in 1847 and died in 1928. The records show that he was student number 65 at the Illinois Industrial University and belonged to the Adelphic Society. Every student had to belong to one society, either Adelphic or Philomathean. (Initially, Regent Gregory arranged this by lot—even numbers belonged to one and odd numbers to the other.) Graham was a handsome man with parted hair, moustache, chin whiskers and a full beard. He was also a man of action and came to be known as “The church builder of Kansas” after establishing seven in that state. He carried on a running correspondence with the Secretary of the Alumni Association, mainly about his dues and his subscription to the Alumni News. There always seemed to be some problem with one or the other. After receiving the News without subscribing he wrote to the secretary and said “A discontinuance, please.”

He liked to try his hand at poetry and in 1921 contributed a poem regarding animals in zoos to the National Humane Review. He had a deep feeling for the “poor imprisoned beasts.” In 1918 he made an appeal in the Alumni Association Quarterly for the relief of starving children in Bible lands. He had stamps with Bible verses prepared and used these in his letters. Some samples: “Deal courageously and the Lord shall be with the good,” “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God.” One he often used simply said “Jesus saves.” That he was a strong Presbyterian could not be doubted. In a letter written on [p. 5] March 11, 1915 to Fred Hatch, Secretary of the class of ’73 he said, “The Reverend Dr. Sunday, Billy Sunday, is certainly a wonderful man under God, and I as a church man am very glad that this great evangelist so much in demand is a Presbyterian. . . . It gives me additional inspiration to think of Mr. Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, Mr. Thomas Marshall, Vice President, and Mr. William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State, all Presbyterians. Of course there are many good great people in other churches as well.”

The University YMCA was on its way. Before the end of 1873, borrowing the language of a 1948 Y’s Indian telling it like it might have been told in 1873: “Social, business, and prayer meetings are being held every week and Sunday services are held in Adelphic Hall. Some have called IIU a godless institution and a stronghold of the devil, but the YMCA is meeting this challenge. No longer does the mile of windswept prairie between the campus and the churches in Champaign and Urbana keep the IIU Aggies away from religious services. Attendance at Y prayer meetings is growing and the Y is well aware of the broad path of opportunity before it. A long-range plan is being worked on now so that in the years to come, if enrollment should ever jump to as high as 500 students, the Y will be ready.”

The Campus in 1873

The Illinois Industrial University was just five years old and the Civil War was just eight years past when the University of Illinois YMCA was formed. Into what kind of environment was it born?

The recently ended war still exerted an influence though the eight-year lapse of time and the absence of a GI Bill resulted in few veteran students. But there were some—among them Reuben Wood, Pasley Phillips (a YMCA member) and Emory Patch. Several members of the staff were veterans of the Civil War and the student cadets wore uniforms modeled after West Point. The Land Grant Act of 1862, born during the Civil War, required that males receive military instruction in the institutions accepting the land grant, so the military department was important from the outset.

Illini Years, the picture history of the University of Illinois, opens with the statement, “March came in like a lion and on the second day the prairie wind was howling. It struck at the lonely building and at the frock coat tails of the three men who stood on the steps to greet the boy from Mason. They were three of the ten original faculty members* of the Illinois Industrial University and he was fifteen-year-old James Newton Mathews, the first of 77 students to enter in 1873.”

In the University of Illinois Semi-Centennial History Charles Wesley Rolfe of the class of 1872, an instructor and professor in the University for thirty-seven years and longtime head of the Geology Department, is quoted: “The students [p. 6] of the early days were mostly from the farm and were full to overflowing with physical vigor and as a consequence, while there was very little that could be called mean spirited in their fun, there was a good deal of roughness and horseplay. Sometimes this was carried so far as to be rather unpleasant to those who were not accustomed to life on a western farm. . . . The admission of girls to the University at the beginning of the third year had a tendency to modify this roughness to a considerable degree. The girls were mostly town bred and looked with disapproval on that particular type of roughness.” And in this same vein The Student for January, 1873, remarked “Since the admission of the girls, not many boys go unshaved and uncombed. Still less number go collarless and not one is found with his pants in his boots.” In this issue it was also noted that “Our choir is improving, yet it still contains some saw filers.” Whether or not this improvement in the choir is attributed to the “admission of the girls” isn’t clear.

At the beginning of 1873 the University had two buildings—the main building in which virtually all the life of the University centered and a drill hall and machine shop completed in 1872. Students called the main building “The Elephant.” Dormitories were on the top two floors; students brought their own beds, bedding and stoves. The University sold coal at cost.

From the outset religious activity was an important part of student life. John Milton Gregory, first Regent of the University, himself conducted morning chapel services and occasionally a Sunday afternoon address. Lorado Taft, who attributes to Dr. Gregory his inspiration to become a sculptor, remarked about these early chapel services, “Every University of Illinois student of the ’70s will tell you of Dr. Gregory’s morning chapel talks, those earnest, kindly appeals with their almost personal challenge to each one of us. Proud as we are today of the giant institution which we claim as Alma Mater with its army of teachers and its city full of pupils, one must acknowledge that something very precious has been lost in the passing of these intimate chapel meetings.” There is evidence that all did not share this view of chapel. The Student in March, 1873, under “Locals and Miscellaneous” inserted an ad: “Wanted—the presence of our faculty at the chapel services in the morning.”

Student life was conditioned in religious ways through the background of the students themselves, the communities and families from which they came and the religious background of early faculty members. This extended even to the first Board of Trustees. Governor Oglesby was roundly criticized by a Presbyterian clergyman of Springfield for appointing so many Baptists to the first board. Then to top it all, the Board elected Dr. Gregory, an ordained Baptist minister, as the first Regent. Included among courses taught in the first year at the Illinois Industrial University were moral Philosophy and Evidences of Christianity. An 1871 editorial in The Student condemned with equal fervor both Brigham Young and the Pope. This is some evidence of the religious climate of the day.

Then as now the public had an eye on the students, ready to pass critical judgment on aberrations from the norms of their home community. But then as [p. 7] now the student newspaper stood ready and alert to pass judgment on those who passed judgment—sometimes seriously, sometimes in high flown words, sometimes humorously. Witness this item from the Locals column of the February, 1873, issue of The Student—the very month the University of Illinois YMCA came into existence: “It is reported that some of our students spend considerable time at the temperance billiard room in town where not even the smell of tobacco smoke is allowed to permeate. It is a curious fact that a few of the boys come away dizzy headed which perhaps may be accounted for by the aerial situation of the room being in an upper story.” Perhaps there is no connection or perhaps there is but The Student reported in the November issue of 1873 that Regent Gregory’s Sunday lectures during the Fall term had been upon “The Temptations of Young Men.” The first three lectures dealt with the evils of money-getting as the chief aim of life, gambling, and the use of intoxicating drinks. Apparently 1873 was a propitious year for the University YMCA to come to life.

The Movement Which Produced University YMCAs

Only fourteen years after the Young Men’s Christian Association movement had been started in London in 1844 by George Williams, the first university YMCA was organized. It proved to be a short step from improving the lot of young men adrift in the modern city to preserving spiritual and religious values for young men adrift in the modern universities of the day. Williams found among the clerks of London, whose working and living conditions were onerous, a readiness to join with him in improving not only their spiritual condition but some of the temporal conditions with which they were confronted. The growth of the movement was spectacular. Within a year eighteen different groups had been organized in London. Large numbers of business men and ministers served as officers. Seven years later, in 1851, the idea traveled to America and YMCAs were organized in Montreal and Boston.

By the end of the next seven years, in 1858, the first university YMCAs were organized, one at the University of Virginia and one at the University of Michigan. Which was first remains in dispute though Clarence P. Shedd in his master’s thesis “The Origin and Development of the Young Men’s Christian Association Movement in North America” gives the nod to the University of Virginia. Shedd’s conclusion seems to be based on the fact that the University of Virginia had a going program before one was developed in Michigan. This program included public lectures, maintenance of a religious library, district prayer meetings, social service to the community and to the “destitute country around the University.” Within a few years other university YMCAs appeared at Princeton, at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, at the Milton Academy in Wisconsin. During the ’60s more were formed and during the ’70s with Robert Weidensall added to the staff, large numbers of universities were visited and many more student YMCAs created.

The YMCA movement in Illinois preceded establishment of the Student [p. 8] Association at the Illinois Industrial University by twenty years. Associations were established in 1853 in Peoria, Quincy, Springfield, and Chicago.

A student YWCA, the first in America, was established at the Normal University in Normal, Illinois in 1872. By 1877, due to Weidensall’s efforts, a student department was set up in YMCA headquarters and Luther Wishard was hired as the first college secretary. During the next twelve years the college program grew rapidly and became an important and integral part of the total YMCA program, not only in America but world wide. Much of the credit for this development is given to Weidensall about whom it was written, “notwithstanding his visions he accomplished a marvelous life work in the realm of the realities.”

Following and working with Weidensall and Wishard were Charles K. Ober and John R. Mott, the latter a frequent visitor and speaker on the University of Illinois campus. These men were known as “The Big Four” in university YMCA development. But as always, there were many behind-the-scenes workers in all of the universities and colleges. The college movement, for example, received a healthy push when during the thirteenth annual YMCA convention in Detroit in 1868 Professor A. K. Spence from Michigan introduced a resolution urging the establishment of college YMCAs throughout the country. The public attitude about universities no doubt helped the movement. There was a general feeling that universities were godless and unchristian—so any movement within a university aimed at removing this characterization would be welcomed by the public, particularly the parents of students.

Antedating the university and college YMCA movement were student religious societies and associations which by 1850 existed in virtually every institution of higher learning in the country. The first such college religious society is credited to Harvard in 1706. It was established by the Reverend Recompense Wadsworth. The Reverend Wadsworth died while a young man. In delivering his funeral sermon, Cotton Mather said: “Some students formed a society which laying to heart the general decay of serious piety in the professions of it resolved upon essays to speak to one another and in the sweetest methods of brotherly love, watch over one another. . . .” Revival meetings were one of the activities of these early associations. Shedd remarks that many college men were “found by the revivals.” President Griffin of Williams in 1825 stated, “The arrows of the Almighty stuck fast in several hearts,” following a revival at that institution.

A prime objective of the early American universities was to provide a trained ministry for the church. This was the major objective of Harvard College when it was established in 1638. And for the first sixty years after its establishment one half of its graduates entered the ministry. Three fourths of all Yale graduates entered the ministry during its first twelve years of functioning. By 1846 there were 35,000 American college graduates, one fourth of whom were in the ministry. Nevertheless, even these early universities earned a reputation for godlessness. Cotton Mather remarked in 1717 that there was “an indifference [p. 9] to religion” and “general decadence in piety or morals.” In 1760 the authorities at Yale forbad more than two gallons of wine in a student’s room during Commencement Week. Apparently gaiety was to be restrained. Shedd remarked that godlessness at Williams and Princeton led the Christian students to organize religious associations.

A commitment to international service and missionary service also arose before the advent of the university YMCAs. In 1808 a group at Williams College, referred to as the “Haystack Group,” because of where they sought shelter from a rain while deliberating in the out-of-doors, formed the first college American Foreign Missionary Society “to effect in the person of its members a mission to the heathen.” They were afraid of failure and ridicule so all their early records were kept in cipher. The missionary cause was furthered by the establishment of societies of religious inquiry and societies of missionary inquiry, the first of these being formed at Knox College in 1840.

The genius of the university YMCA movement was that it captured something which had already been created, catalyzed it, and gave it form and direction—not only locally but on a national and international scale. And among all these associations none has contributed more significantly and with more distinction at both the local and international level than the University of Illinois YMCA.

* Powell’s semi-centennial history of the University of Illinois states that there were but three original members. There may have been ten by the end of the year.