Austin College was chartered in 1849 at Huntsville, where Sam Houston and other statesmen of the young Republic sat on its early boards, and it relocated to Sherman in 1876. It still carries its original name and charter, a point of pride its own historical marker spells out. This short loop starts at that marker, visits the hall Sherman's citizens paid for after a 1913 fire, climbs toward the chapel tower that anchors the skyline, and ends among the library and science buildings on Richards Street.
About this site
Austin College is a private college or university in Sherman, Grayson County. It is one of 2 degree-granting colleges and universities TexasRoam maps in Grayson County.
The site sits at 33.6478, -96.5953 near Sherman. The nearest cataloged historic site is Austin College (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include Carr-Taliaferro House, Pioneer Cotton Seed Oil Mill, and Old Settlers Association of Grayson County.
Austin College was organized by the Brazos Presbytery in 1849, when missionary Daniel Baker and two fellow ministers chose Huntsville as its home after local citizens offered money and land. The college was chartered on November 22, 1849, with a charter patterned on those of Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and it honored Stephen F. Austin after Baker firmly refused to let the school carry his own name. Sam Houston and Anson Jones, both former presidents of the Republic of Texas, sat on its first board of trustees, and classes began in the fall of 1850 under president Samuel McKinney. After struggling through the Civil War, Reconstruction and yellow fever outbreaks, the Presbyterian synod moved the college north to Sherman, where it reopened in 1878. A fire destroyed the main building in 1913, but students and faculty pledged to carry on and Sherman residents raised money to rebuild. The college admitted women in 1918, consolidated with Texas Presbyterian College of Milford in the early 1930s, and has grown since the 1950s into a nationally ranked liberal arts college known for study abroad and undergraduate research.
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