page_title: Texas Christian University
section_title: Origins in Fort Worth, 1869–1873
hierarchical_section_title: Texas Christian University / History / Origins in Fort Worth, 1869–1873
caption_attribution_description: English: Part of TCU's campus
context_page_description: Texas Christian University is a private Christian university in Fort Worth, Texas. It was established in 1873 by brothers Addison and Randolph Clark as the Add-Ran Male & Female College.
  The campus is located on 272 acres about 3 miles from downtown Fort Worth. TCU is affiliated with, but not governed by, the Disciples of Christ. The university consists of eight constituent colleges and schools and has a classical liberal arts curriculum. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
  TCU's mascot is Superfrog, based on the Texas state reptile—the horned frog. For most varsity sports, TCU competes in the Big 12 conference of the NCAA's Division I. As of Fall 2019, the university enrolls around 11,024 students, with 9,474 being undergraduates.
context_section_description: The East Texas brothers Addison and Randolph Clark, together with the support of their father Joseph A. Clark, first founded Texas Christian University. The Clarks were scholar-preacher/teachers associated with the Restoration Movement. These early leaders of the Restoration Movement were the spiritual ancestors of the modern Disciples of Christ, as well as major proponents of education.
  Following their return from service in the Civil War, brothers Addison and Randolph established a children's preparatory school in Fort Worth. This school, known as the Male & Female Seminary of Fort Worth, operated from 1869 to 1874. Both Clarks nourished a vision for an institution of higher education that would be Christian in character, but non-sectarian in spirit and intellectually open-minded. They purchased five blocks of land in downtown Fort Worth in 1869 for that purpose.
  But from 1867 to 1872, the character of Fort Worth changed substantially due to the commercial influence of the Chisholm Trail, the principal route for moving Texas cattle to the Kansas rail heads. A huge influx of cattle, men, and money transformed the sleepy frontier village into a booming, brawling cowtown. The area around the property purchased by the Clarks for their college soon became the town's vice district, an unrelieved stretch of saloons, gambling halls, dance parlors, and bawdy houses catering to the rough tastes of the Chisholm Trail cowboys. Its rough and rowdy reputation had, by 1872, acquired it the nickname of "Hell's Half Acre" (the heart of which is today occupied by the Fort Worth Convention Center and the Fort Worth Water Gardens).
  The Clarks feared that this negative environment undermined the fledgling university's mission. They began to look for an alternative site for their college, and they found it at Thorp Spring, a small community and stagecoach stop 40 miles (60 km) in Hood County to the southwest near the frontier of Comanche and Kiowa territory.
caption: Part of TCU's Campus
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