History
The college was founded on October 13, 1849 in Huntsville, Texas by Princeton-educated missionary Dr. Daniel Baker.
The college moved to Sherman in 1876 and became co-educational in 1918, merging in 1930 with the all female Texas Presbyterian College.
Baker named the school after Texas historical figure Stephen F. Austin. Another important figure in Texas history, Sam Houston, served on the original board of trustees for the school, and the former site in Huntsville later became today's Sam Houston State University.
On September 20, 1973, musician Jim Croce died in a plane crash in Natchitoches, Louisiana on his way to perform the next night at Austin College. Six people perished in the crash.
Read more about this topic: Austin College
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“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“... all big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (18841962)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (182595)