Barnes was born in England and brought to Canada by his parents when he was four years old. Barnes graduated from Hamline University at St. Paul, Minnesota in 1897 where he became a leader in athletics, debating, and other student activities. Barnes was doing graduate work at Harvard University when he was called to the presidency of Illinois Wesleyan in 1905 and he served until 1908.
Smith was born on August 4th, 1845 in East Livermore, Maine. He was a graduate of Connecticut Wesleyan in 1871. He was later the head of the Montpelier Seminary in Vermont. Smith was an instructor at Wesleyan for two years and then went to Europe. He was elected president in 1898 and served until 1905.
Wilder graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1873, and was the first alumni to become president of the institution. He was born in Greenfield, Illinois on July 7th, 1849. Wilder worked on a farm as a boy and later taught “country school.” He held pastorates in five Illinois towns and was presiding elder of the Decatur district at age 34.
Adams was president of Illinois Wesleyan from 1875-1888. He attended the preparatory department of Northwestern University and was licensed to preach by the age of 19, serving as a student pastor in Chicago. He enlisted in the Civil War in 1863 and within a year was elected lieutenant. Adams organized the first company of African Americans and was later promoted to captain and then to major. After resigning from the military, he went to study at Garrett Biblical Institute and graduated in 1870.
Fallows was born in England and immigrated to Wisconsin with his family in 1848 where he joined the Methodist Church at the age of 19. He studied at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin and at the University of Wisconsin. He was the Vice-President and Principal of Galesville University for two years, joined the Union Army in 1862, and served as the chaplain for the 32nd Wisconsin Infantry. He was also a Professor-elect of Natural Sciences at Lawrence and later a superintendent. He became president of Illinois Wesleyan University in 1873.
In 1874 he established a non-resident degree program that awarded Ph.B, M.A., and Ph.D.’s to “professional men and women whose duties and environments are such as to make a resident course of study an impossibility.” (See pp. 38-39 of An historical sketch of the Illinois Wesleyan University, together with a record of alumni: 1857-1895). This was the first-ever distance education program in the United States and it ended in 1910.
Sears was the first official president of Illinois Wesleyan University and served from 1855 until 1857. He was born in New York in 1820 but spent most of his life in Ohio. He graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1841. Before his presidency, he held the dual position of librarian and Professor of Ancient Languages and Literature.
According to the 1998-99 President’s Report*, one notable contribution Sears made was ensuring there was a “‘substantial sidewalk’ linking the school and town. Sears noted that when it rained, the roads became so muddy it was impossible to get into town from the school ‘out in the country.’ In fact, he was so determined to connect Illinois Wesleyan with the growing community of Bloomington that he spent $500 of his own money to build the sidewalk.”
*Quoted from “Part 1-The Beginning,” One Building, One Sidewalk: 1850-2000, Past is Prologue. 1998-99 President’s Report, A Sesquicentennial Preview (p. 5). University Archives Record Group 5-2/7.
President Harry McPherson
McPherson Hall opened as IWU’s first modern production and instructional facility for Theatre on April 17, 1963. Prior to the Hall, a carriage house adjacent to Kemp Hall had been in use since 1949. This building is named for Harry W. McPherson, IWU President (1933-37), long-time Trustee and member of the Class of 1907. More information about him is available in his presidential blog post.
The Melba Johnson Kirkpatrick Laboratory Theatre and Jerome Mirza Theatre are part of the McPherson Theatre Arts department.
Ken Albers (standing) is pictured with Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick was a 1932 IWU graduate and headed the University’s Drama Department from 1938 to 1943. A champion of the arts in Bloomington for several decades, she received both the McLean County Women of Distinction Award and Illinois Wesleyan’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
Jerome Mirza
The theatre in Illinois Wesleyan’s McPherson Hall was named the Jerome Mirza Theatre in recognition of a $2.5 million gift to the School of Theatre Arts (SoTA) from the Jerome Mirza Foundation in October 2015.
A 1960 graduate of Illinois Wesleyan, Mirza (1937-2007) was a well-known Bloomington and Chicago trial attorney, who often credited his courtroom success to the theatre training he received at Illinois Wesleyan. See the press release for more information.
President Minor Myers, jr., 1993 Commencement
“Go forth and do well, but even more go forth and do good.” — noted in the 1993 Commencement files (RG 6-1/2)
People often remember the parting advice former President Minor Myers, jr. made at Commencement each year, and we were recently asked to find out when he first said it and if it had any other origin.
President Myers didn’t read from complete scripts during speeches; the above quote was in the brief, typed outline of his remarks for Commencement 1993.
But how did he come to develop this phrase? We followed the trail back to his first campus speech and found two instances that illuminate a possibility.
An earlier notation we found comes close to the eventual phrase: “We shall both prosper only as we serve well.” This note was penciled in on an “Outline for Talk at Writers [sic] Conference” dated March 28, 1990 (RG 2-12/3/1: Speech Outlines, July 1989-March 2002, folder 3 of 3).
The typed notes directly above this line show an origin: “Anglican / read of Wesley, went to his house, found his bust / example of unremitting effort to do good. / and unending joy in doing it. / that is the satisfaction of what we are doing, // the frustrations, / but the reward is the sense we are contributing to the maintenance of that which is good by unending efforts to make it better.”
And going further back, a note on Myers’ 1989 Inaugural Address also refers to John Wesley’s “devotion to doing good,” so perhaps we can say that the founder of Methodism itself is the inspiration for the quote that Myers crafted over the next four years and made his own!
IWU history texts are now available in the Internet Archive! Through our membership in the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) we were able to digitize the seven published histories on Illinois Wesleyan this semester. CARLI funded the scanning and they are now available online through an agreement with The Internet Archive, a non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library.
The Internet Archive hosts this and any other content we choose to add in the future with a customized homepage available at http://archive.org/details/illinoiswesleyanuniversity, but of course all of the texts are fully searchable and discoverable through any search engine.
Tips and links for researching these and other historical IWU sources are available at http://libguides.iwu.edu/IWUHistory.
