The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-04-13
THE BIRTHPLACE OF HIGHER
 EDUCATION IN THE WEST


 In that vast 1tretch of country be- tween the Al1eghany Mountains and the Pacific there have sprung up within the last half-century scores of universities which, in wealth and in fluence and number of students, have equalled or surpassed the more ven- erable institutions of the East. Milf tant and progressive, inbued with the enthusiasm of youth and with scant re- spect for scholastic traditions, they have abandoned the beaten paths and have assumed the role of educational pioneers. Old distinctions of class and sex have been abandoned, and the ''co-ed' stands as the type of this new educational system to which the West has given birth.
 This Sunday, the ninth of April, marks the 126th anniversary of the humble beginning of higher educa- tion in the West. On the date in 1790 Transylvania, Seminary in Lexington, ky, held it's first commencement ex- ercises-the first public college com mencement west of the Aleghanles- This pioneer among the institutions of higher education in the West was housed in a rude little building much less pretentious than the average rural 1 school of today. The Blue Grass capi- tai was then tiny village. Col. Rob- ert Patterson built a, fort at Lexing- ton and laid out a town in 1779, and Col. James Wilkinson opened a store there in 1784. Three years later Col John Bradford and Col. Fielding Bradford established in Lexington the first newspaper west of the A1leghan- ies-the Kentucky Gazette. With a college and. a newspaper, Lexington became the Vests first center of Knowledge.
 It was in 1780 that the Virginia, gen era1 assembly passed a bill providing a, grant of land flor the purpose of 1 a public school or seminary of learn 1 ing'' in the county of Kentucky A 1 school Wassopened in 1784, and four years later it was removed to Lexng- 1 ton, and became Pennsylvania Semin- ary. The tuition of a matriculate was five pounds a year, one7half cash, the other half in property" The stu dents paid for their board and Iodg- l ing mine pounds 8 year in property, pork, ocrn.s tobacco, etc.,
 1 Soon after Transy1vania's first com mencement a rival institution, called Kentucky Academy, was opened at Pisgah, George Washington. John 1 Adams, Aaron Burr and other men of 1 prominence contributing to the fund l for it's esta b1ishment- For a time there ] was fierce rivalry between the two in l stitutions, but in 1799 the two academ- merged, l bilious title of TransyIvania Universi- ty.
 | The Rev James Moore, famed as a fIute-player and as an eloquent and | convincing preacher, was the first 1 president of Pennsylvania University. 1 The Moores have ever since been pro- minent in the Blue Grass country, but perhaps the most noted of the clan was the late Rev. Charles c. Moore, I who violated all the Blue Grass pro- prieties by denouncing rum and re- ligion in one breath, and who was long the editor of an .infide19 paper in which he condemned Christianity in language so scathing that more than once it brought him into conflict with the authorities.
 The Pennsylvania University of to- day is a modest and humble institution I compared with such universities as Michigan, Illinois, Chicago, Minneso- ta, California, Stanford and scores o1 l others in every state of the West, but it is the daddy of them all, the first university of the great West in point of age. Its student body of 300 is but > a handful compared with the thous- 1 ands of many other western universi- ties, but even the tradition-defying
 West must accord TransylXania the
 honors due to the pioneer.
 Il Pennsylvania University commem-
 crates the ambitious project of that
 prince of pioneer adventurers, Dan
 ieI Boone, and his associates, Richard
 Henderson, Thomas Slaughter, Mat
 thew Jewett, and others; to form 2 Inew commonwealth, to which they gave-the name Of Pennsylvania. They
 sent a delegate to the Continents
 Congress, but he was refused admis sion on the ground that Transylvanis
 or Kentucky county belonged to Vir
 ginia.