Marshall · Harrison County · Private · Official site
Texas campuses and the stories they hold.
About the campus
East Texas Baptist University began as the College of Marshall, the dream of local pastor W. T. Tardy, who believed this hill above Marshall was made for a college. In 1912 its backers bought 100 acres of the old Van Zandt family place, the town raised money for a first building, and classes began in 1917; the school became East Texas Baptist College in 1944. Its motto, 'May the Light on the Hill Never Die,' nods to that hilltop site. This walk starts at the original hall, visits the Van Zandt homesite, crosses the modern core of library and chapels, and ends at the historic cemetery that began as the Van Zandts' family graveyard.
About this site
East Texas Baptist University is a private college or university in Marshall, Harrison County. It is one of 2 degree-granting colleges and universities TexasRoam maps in Harrison County.
The site sits at 32.5560, -94.3733 near Marshall. The nearest cataloged historic site is Marshall Hall (historical marker), about under a tenth of a mile away. Others within a short drive include Van Zandt Hill, Greenwood Cemetery, and Matthew Duncan Ector.
East Texas Baptist University dates to 1912, when the Rev. W. T. Tardy, pastor of First Baptist Church in Marshall, founded the College of Marshall as a Baptist school for the region. Thurman C. Gardner became its first president in 1913, and Marshall Hall, the first building and still the oldest on campus, was finished in 1916; the college began classes the next summer as a junior college. A lamp known as the Light on the Hill was placed on Marshall Hall's east lawn in 1932 and has remained the school's best-known symbol. Trustees voted on January 31, 1944, to rename the school East Texas Baptist College and expand it to four years, and it conferred its first eight bachelor's degrees in 1945. Frank Shelby Groner (1928–42) and Harvey Daniel Bruce (1942–60) were its two longest-serving presidents. The Baptist General Convention of Texas approved university status in November 1982, and the East Texas Baptist University name followed in 1984. Marshall Hall, the Light on the Hill and the Scarborough Cross remain landmarks of the hilltop campus in Marshall.
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