The School That Saved Baylor: Legacies of Waco University

Baylor University’s beloved origin story — how Texas’ oldest university, a scrappy little Baptist college in tiny Independence, overcame impossible odds, moved to Waco, and became one of America’s great institutions — conveniently glosses over the other significant factor in that transformation: Waco University.

And while the larger-than-life presence of irascible, imperious Rufus C. Burleson overshadows virtually every other figure in the earliest days of both schools, the legacies of Waco University deserve to be more than just a footnote in the storied history of the world’s largest Baptist university.

The beginnings of what would become Waco University can be traced to 1851, when the sprawling Trinity River Baptist Association, originally founded in 1848, voted to create two schools — one for boys and one for girls — in Texas. In 1856, the association chose Waco as the home of the Trinity River Male High School, to be housed in the Waco Baptist Church. Classes began a year later with 49 students. Trinity River was Waco’s first college preparatory school, with ministers and the sons of ministers receiving free tuition. 

Despite a series of early financial issues, The Handbook of Waco and McLennan County, Texas notes that the school prospered at its location in the 500 block of South Fifth Street, mostly because of the tireless efforts of the Rev. Solomon G. O’Bryan, pastor of the Waco Baptist Church since 1854. He had taught mathematics at Baylor for two years before coming to Waco and personally raised more than $2,600 to provide for facilities and salaries. O’Bryan served both as the school’s first principal and as a trustee.

According to Eugene Baker, O’Bryan resigned from both Waco Baptist and Trinity River Male High School in 1859 and was replaced by John C. West as president. West was equally successful. The school purchased seven and a half acres on South Fifth Street and by February 1860 had moved into two new brick buildings, Maggie Houston Hall and Cowden Hall, valued at $12,000. 

Also in February, when many Waco-area Baptist churches withdrew from the Trinity River Baptist Association to form the Waco Baptist Association, the school renamed itself Waco Classical School. The school placed itself under under the supervision of the Waco Baptist Association in April 1861.

An essential benefactor of Waco University was Joseph W. Speight, who throughout his life tirelessly and generously combined his twin passions: education and water (both the Brazos and Trinity rivers, as well as what would become the Waco Suspension Bridge).

With the onset of the Civil War that same month, the all-male Waco Classical suddenly dealt with the wholesale departure of most of the students and faculty, including principal West, to join the Confederacy.

The school’s board of trustees, however, had an ace-in-the-hole. They had secretly been in contact with the disgruntled president of Baylor University in Independence, Rufus C. Burleson. Led by Speight, who served as chairman of the board from 1861 to 1886, Waco University ‘enticed” Burleson and other members of the Baylor faculty to move to the school in Central Texas. Baker added that trustees pledged to raise a $20,000 endowment, build houses for Burleson and his fellow professors, and to “turn over the classical school’s two buildings for all uses he deemed appropriate.”

Shortly thereafter, board chair Speight requested that Waco Classical School formally be renamed Waco University.

Burleson’s tenure at Baylor in Independence had long been marked by self-inflicted controversy. When he originally accepted the presidency in 1851, he insisted the “male department and its functions were of primary importance” to the new university, while the women’s department would remain “in all ways secondary,” according to historian Michael A. White.

In doing so, however, Burleson lessened one of the true distinctives of Baylor. Since its founding in 1845, the school was a progressive pioneer in coeducation. At the time, Baylor had been one of only a handful of colleges that permitted women, and the only such school in Texas. Burleson got his way.

But by 1860, the Baylor “female department” had “far surpassed the male department in accomplishment,” White writes. Despite widespread prejudice against young women attending college and Burleson’s barely concealed displeasure, under the leadership of Horace and Martha Clark, the female department erected a new three-story building, built a strong new library, and enrolled more than 150 students.

Burleson’s men’s department, conversely, was operating under the prospect of Texas’ impending succession from the United States and rumors of war after the election of 1860. 

Equally troubling was the simmering conflict between Clark and Burleson. But the descriptions of Burleson in the various histories and biographies tend to make the prospect of trouble sound more likely than not — he was “a strong, forceful man,” with a “stern, uncompromising spirit,” a “stern disciplinarian” who “saw nothing incongruous in first praying with a young man and then taking him out and administering a sound flogging.”

Clark, while equally strong-willed, was beloved by his students and faculty, and one of the school’s original founders, Judge R.E.B. Baylor was particularly fond of both Horace and Martha. In addition to his administrative and teaching duties, Horace presided over the female boarding house and even served in the dining hall.

Historians note that as early as the mid-1850s, Burleson had begun bleeding resources from the more popular female department to bolster the men. The women consistently received the oldest, most threadbare books and were originally housed in the oldest buildings. He rarely even ventured on their side of the small dividing creek (known by students as “the River Jordan”) in Independence that separated the two Baylor departments. 

By 1857, mention of the friction between the older Clark and the younger, ambitious Burleson even occurs in the minutes of the Baylor Board of Trustees. The trustees eventually asserted that it was they — not Burleson — who were in control of the University and that the two men were instructed to operate independently of each other. But as White writes, “as the female department achieved more and more success, the friction increased.”

The conflict between Clark and Burleson came to a head on June 17, 1860, at a Sunday night service at Independence Baptist Church, where both men were members. Accusations and counteraccusations were leveled and both sides became emotional during the long exchanges.

Again, the board of trustees tried to intervene, holding a tumultuous hearing where all grievances were aired. In the end, Burleson’s actions and statements were condemned. Chastened and humiliated, Burleson and three faculty members (including Burleson’s brother, Richard) gave notice that they were leaving Baylor. Burleson’s dislike of the idea of educating young women had, ultimately, proven insurmountable.

But for at least six months prior to the fateful Board meeting, Burleson and his disgruntled faculty had secretly been preparing a soft landing spot in case things went south in Independence and had been in correspondence with Speight and the board of trustees of the Waco school at least since January 1, 1861.

White writes that the Baylor trustees were “not unduly alarmed at the prospect of losing Burleson and his faculty.” In fact, one board member, J.L. Farquhar, circulated a letter urging recipients to “never express any anxiety for [Burleson and his faculty] to leave — though we would be much gratified if they would.”

Of course, there were more important events happening in the country than the squabbles of a few Baptists in Independence. Texas had formally seceded from the Union on March 2, 1861, and the Civil War began a month later, on April 2, 1861. 

Fueled by Burleson’s fiery rhetoric, Baylor men immediately began deserting their classes and joining the Confederacy. In an essay on Baylor and the Civil War, Dr. Michael Parrish wrote that Burleson insisted that all male students over the age of 18 enlist.

“The crisis [has] demanded us all to shoulder our muskets and win graves of glory or homes of freedom.” In a letter to a Houston newspaper from June 1862, Parrish quotes Burleson as writing, “Our all is at stake. We must be free or perish… Victory is sure.”

As he left Baylor University, Burleson took one last shot at his former employer. When trustees asked why he hadn’t scheduled a graduation ceremony for what was the largest senior class in the history of the men’s department, he wrote back and said that the seniors had “determined not to present themselves for Graduation, but will apply for, and no doubt receive their Diplomas from Waco University on the 4^th of Sept. 1861.”

When George W. Baines was elected as president and professor of natural sciences at Baylor in July, he inherited the hard feelings between those who remained at the school in Independence and Burleson, including allegations that Burleson (and the departing faculty and male students) may have removed some books and apparatus that should have remained in Independence.

Burleson wasted no time in Waco. Shortly after his arrival on the Brazos, Speight and the board of trustees of the Waco Classical School applied to the Texas State Legislature for an amendment to the school’s original charter, renaming it Waco University, with Burleson as president.

But the Civil War left Burleson with a major conundrum. While he was still opposed to “mixing” young men and women in educational settings, it was the female students who were paying the bills, including his salary. The new school, which was predominately a primary and preparatory school, by 1863-1864, enrolled 192 mostly female students.

If Burleson was opposed to coeducation, the trustees of Waco University knew that – at least from a financial standpoint – it would enable them to avoid the fate of most male-only institutions of higher education during and following the Civil War. Fredrick Eby said it was only upon Burleson’s reluctant recommendation that the trustees adopted a policy of allowing both sexes in classes together, basing much of their argument on the success of Baylor University in Independence, though Burleson insisted on separate male and female departments.

Baylor’s Texas Collection has numerous rare documents from Waco University, including the Annual Catalogue of the Trustees, Professors, and Students of Waco University, Male and Female Departments, Waco, Texas, 1865-1866. In addition to information related to classes, discipline, facilities, and fees, the catalogue carefully reassures parents that boys and girls would sit together only in recitation rooms, under the watchful eyes of their professors. A later catalogue asserts this close proximity to the opposite sex would remove the “enchantment of distance and novelty” and instead “destroys in a great degree that foolish sentimentality and clandestine correspondence so common in boarding schools.”

In the years following the Civil War, however, Texas schools faced an entirely different problem. The widespread devastation of Confederate states to the east meant the state grappled with a flood of refugees to the relatively unscathed Texas. To accommodate the surge in enrollment, Bragg wrote Waco University allowed students to room and board off the small campus on South Fifth Street.

Another issue facing the school was that few of the 25 trustees, who were located throughout Texas, could (or would) actually attend board meetings. In 1870, Burleson himself was elected to the board, giving him an uncommon degree of control over the school.

Bragg’s thoughtful research also poses the question of whether or not Waco University was – in fact – a university at all. In the 1866 catalogue, Burleson answers the question:

We adopted, with reluctance, the title University. We would have preferred, for years to come, the name of Waco Academy. And we wish it distinctly understood that we use the term University, not in the general, but in the Texian acceptation … While we challenge the comparison with any school in Texas, we only have what Thomas Jefferson called “A University in ova.”

Essentially, Waco University in the early days was still a college preparatory school. Still, it’s to Burleson’s credit that the school slowly added additional college-level courses until, at some point, it met the requirements of what constituted a college during that era.

Through 1876, the catalogues show a heavy emphasis on algebra, geometry, declamation, Latin grammar, Virgil, Homer and other classical writers, English grammar, American and English history, and the like. Senior-level classes featured titles like Evidences of Christianity and Elements of Criticism, as well as advanced English classes, intellectual philosophy, and moral science. Most science-oriented seniors read French, German, or Spanish, and a few chose to translate Latin.

Upon graduation, depending on their senior course load, men were either awarded a Bachelor of Arts or (if they chose the more science-oriented track), Bachelor of Philosophy. Young women received either the degree of maid of arts or maid of philosophy – the argument being that women couldn’t accurately be called “bachelors.”

The year 1878 marked a series of dramatic changes at Waco University. The extant records are unclear on what finally empowered the school’s full transition to college/university status, though Bragg wrote that the changes were “an effort to keep abreast of the times,” most notably the national rise in support of women’s rights and suffrage movement. The changes were particularly notable in the female department, where the 1877-1878 Catalogue proudly declared, “The Faculty and Board of Trustees are determined to make the standard of scholarship in Waco University equal to that of any institution in the land. Our daughters must be as thoroughly educated as our sons.”

Buoyed by steadily increasing enrollment, the school added a new commercial department that year, featuring the study of commercial law, bookkeeping (including accounting), and commercial calculations.

And, as a Baptist university, students were still required to attend Sunday school and church services each week.

The catalogues also contain a long list of “do” and “don’t” regulations. Firearms, playing cards, singing or the playing of musical instruments, and the consumption of alcohol were prohibited of male students. And any student who criticized the decisions and rules of the faculty (and president) were publicly reprimanded on first offense and suspended for a second offense.

Rules for faculty members were equally strict.

As for Waco itself, in the 1870s, the city was nicknamed “Six-Shooter Junction” and had a well-deserved reputation as a wide-open cattle town. The diary of legendary Texas geologist R.T. Hill depicts his shock at disembarking from the train station in East Waco for the first time during that period:

Unsuspecting readers of the Waco University 1879-1889 Catalogue, however, would have assumed that Waco was the next thing to heaven. The catalogue asserted that the city is, instead, “unsurpassed” as a healthy location and proudly notes that only 10 students had died in the preceding decade, six of whom had died “from measles and other diseases contracted at home.” Bragg added that later catalogues lavishly praised Waco as the “Gem City of Texas,” and then as the “Athens of Texas – the City Churches.”

The 1880 census indicated Waco was a growing city of 7,295, now serviced by three railroad lines, on a major north/south trade route, and with a busy crossing over the Brazos River.

Independence, on the other hand, never progressed beyond the quiet village stage; by the 1880s the population hovered around 400 people. Baylor’s enrollment fell as well and by the 1884-1885 school year it had only 64 students, not all of whom were full-time, on the small campus. Neither the college nor the village recovered from the Washington County Railroad Company’s decision to bypass Independence in 1861 for nearby Brenham. 

Despite heroic efforts by President William Carey Crane, the school was deeply in debt, with crumbling infrastructure and few prospects for the future. Crane’s unexpected death in February 1885 was the final blow.

In fact, Baylor University, the oldest, and best-known school in Texas, had for years teetered on the edge of bankruptcy and was in very real danger of closing. As early as 1869, Crane himself had desperately raised the $300 necessary to buy the campus back when it had been sold at a sheriff’s auction for non-payment of a decades-old $200 debt for shingles. That $300 included the $100 Crane had earlier received in an inheritance.

By comparison, in 1885-1886, Waco University had 19 professors and a student body of 385, despite (as one press released admitted) a few cases of dengue fever, whooping cough, and measles “which, in some few cases, proved fatal.”

Baker reprinted an advertisement for Waco University from the Waco City Directory of 1885 with the proud headline, “Waco University, Male and Female has long been the Leading Institution in Texas.” The supporting copy proudly proclaims, “Our Faculty, location and boarding facilities are unsurpassed in Texas, or the country. We employ, daily, 12-14 teachers, all eminent in their departments, and matriculate over three hundred students annually.”

Also in the advertisement: rates for the five-month term at Waco University, with college classes costing $10 more per class than high school courses. Room and board for the five months was $75 payable, like the courses, in advance.

Who made the first overture about a possible merger between the two colleges? The official records aren’t clear, though there was probably a great deal of back-channel communication between individual board members in both Waco and Independence prior to the merger — but the pressing issue of who actually represented Texas Baptists had to be resolved before anything could happen. 

Lois Smith Murray wrote extensively of the “wrangling” and “ugly competition” at the time for funding between the organizations vying to represent Texas Baptists seriously damaged all of the denomination’s colleges, including Baylor and Waco University. The long overdue rise of public schools in Texas was another factor that impacted financial support for Baptist colleges.

According to Baker, the Rev. B.H. Carroll, pastor of Waco’s First Baptist Church, led efforts to consolidate the state’s two leading Baptist colleges. The Baptist General Association of Texas, which oversaw Waco University, and the Baptist State Convention, which oversaw Baylor University, at last met and voted to consolidate under the new name of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, ending decades of rivalry. 

Representatives from the two colleges then met in Temple in December 1885 to resolve the consolidation of Waco University and Baylor University. 

In the end, Waco University had the larger student body, ample financial resources, and the visionary leadership of Joseph Speight. Baylor had the illustrious name and a brave and noble history of perseverance … but little else.

In an effort to convince Baylor to relocate to Waco, representatives from the city offered to provide a “substantial gift” of money, as well as land and facilities in an under-developed 23-acre site a few blocks south of the original Waco University campus on South Fifth Street. The area, wrote Baker, then known as Minglewood Park and Oak Lawn, had originally been purchased by the city from the two principal figures at Waco University, Judge. J.C. West and Gen. Joseph W. Speight, who had earlier generously donated it to the city for the use of the new school. West and Speight truly are two of Baylor’s unsung heroes. In fact, Old Main and Burleson Hall were built where Speight’s home originally stood.

Burleson was named as the president of the “new” Baylor, with the Rev. Reddin Andrews, who had briefly succeeded Crane in Independence, as the school’s vice president. Though he only served as for a year, Andrews was the first native Texan and Baylor graduate to serve as president of the University.

Baylor, which had been chartered by the State of Texas in 1845, had its charter amended and approved in June 1886. Murray writes that the dispersal of the remaining assets, as well as the settlement of various claims against Baylor in Independence, continued for another year.

The “new” Baylor University met in the “old” Waco University’s buildings on South Fifth Street while buildings for a new campus were quickly erected. According to Mrs. E.W. Provence in the Diamond Jubilee yearbook, Baylor opened in fall 1886 with 337 students and by 1888 already had 412 students.

The original Waco University buildings remained in use as male residence halls. They were remodeled at some point in the 1890s and renamed Maggie Houston Hall. Eventually, both were demolished.

The first two structures on the new campus, the Corsicana red brick Main Building (Old Main) was completed in 1887 and Georgia Burleson Hall (named in honor of Burleson’s wife), opened a year later.

Two large bells now situated in the middle of the campus in front of Burleson Hall are among the very few relics that tell at least something of this little-known aspect of Baylor’s past. Purchased by students in 1874, the larger bell rang the beginnings of classes, assemblies, and special occasions at Waco University and was transported to the new Baylor campus in 1886. 

The smaller, more weather-beaten bell traveled from Independence to Waco that same year. It was originally given to the Baylor Female Department by founding trustee Albert C. Horton in 1858.  

Rufus C. Burleson, whose original opposition to coeducation had precipitated a major, damaging split at Baylor in Independence, by 1886 now earnestly touted coeducation at Baylor as one of the school’s strengths.

Burleson served as Baylor president until 1897, when he was elected President Emeritus, a position the old warrior only reluctantly accepted. His prominent place in the University’s history is justly celebrated and recognized. 

But I would argue for the inclusion of — at the very least — a prominent marker recognizing Speight’s transformative gift of the land where the oldest buildings of Baylor stand. Speight died in Waco on April 26, 1888.

Today, a Texas historical marker identifying the location of Waco University is located at the busy intersection of South Fifth Street and Clay Avenue. 

But modern Baylor owes an enduring debt to Waco University. The school provided financial resources and stability at a time when Baylor was at its lowest ebb and established, once and for all time, the unbreakable distinctive of offering a college education to women at time when true coeducation, like women’s suffrage, was unknown or even actively opposed throughout most of the United States.

And perhaps that’s Waco University’s greatest legacy.