Preview
Source Collection
Florence Holmes Ryan family collection, Special Collections Department, University of Memphis Libraries
Identifier
sc.0509.001_006.001
Description
Students and teachers of a class at Arkansas College, Batesville, Arkansas, circa 1896. Some names are noted on the verso: June Glenn (2nd left, bottom row), Effie Glenn (fourth left, standing), Nora Glenn (1st left, middle row), Mother Glenn (2nd right, standing), Ray Adler (2nd left, middle row), Mr. Oldfield (center, middle row), Augusta Malone (3rd right, standing). Arkansas College was founded in 1872 by the Rev. Isaac Long of the Arkansas Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Typical of nineteenth-century denominational institutions, Arkansas College maintained a grammar school (which was phased out in the 1890s) and a secondary academy (discontinued in the 1920s), and featured a curriculum heavy on mathematics, the classical languages (Latin and Greek), and religious instruction. The college remained under the guidance of the Long family for most of its first four decades; Isaac J. Long served as president from the college’s founding until his death in 1891, and his son, Eugene R. Long, served two terms as president (1891–1895 and 1897–1913). The college was, from its inception, nonsectarian in philosophy and coeducational. Arkansas College’s first class of graduates in 1876 included three women who became the state’s first to receive the AB (bachelor’s) degree. The lack of access to secondary education in north central Arkansas and the state’s meager Presbyterian population kept Arkansas College small. Before World War I, college-level enrollment rarely exceeded 100, and there were no more than five full-time faculty, including the president. In 1994 Arkansas College was renamed Lyon College.
Date Created
6-10-2021
Date
circa 1896
Recommended Citation
"Arkansas College class, circa 1896" (2021). Images. 3.
https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/speccoll-mss-fhryan2/3
Keywords
Arkansas College (Batesville, Ark.)
