Illinois Honors Alumnus

Dartmouth men will have some interest in the centennial celebration of a western college. It is Illinois College at Jacksonville, Illinois. The movement which led to the founding of this institution one hundred years ago was initiated by John M. Ellis of the class of 1822. Born in Keene, New Hampshire, in 1793, Ellis, like most New England boys, spent his early days on a farm. Before he entered Dartmouth he had learned and practiced the trade of a tanner, but the urge to religious service was so strong that he gave up a profitable tanning business in order to become a poor, wandering home missionary on the western frontier. Mr. Ellis had not been long in Illinois until he saw the great need of better educational facilities for the settlers and, therefore, he organized a movement for the establishment of a "seminary," or college. A little later a group of Yale students, known as the "Yale Band" in the educational traditions of the Middle West, became associated with him and the result was the establishment of Illinois College, one of the oldest and best known colleges in that part of the country. The memory of this Dartmouth alumnus was honored at the time of the centennial celebration.

The celebration was held between the dates of October 12 and 15. President James R. Angell of Yale gave the centennial address. Among the other speakers were President Livingston Farrand of Cornell, President David Kinley of the University of Illinois, President Donald J. Cowling of Carleton College, and Governor Louis L. Emmerson of Illinois. Dartmouth Collegewasrepresented at the celebration by Henry H. Hilton '9O.

Ellis spent a very active and useful life in the educational and religious field. After assisting in the establishment of Illinois College he and his wife helped to establish the Jacksonville Female Academy, for many years a high-grade seminary for girls. Somewhat later he helped in the founding of Wabash College in Indiana. He was for a time an agent for Dartmouth College and in later life, deeply stirred by the slavery controversy and the Kansas-Nebraska question, he was actively engaged in plans for establishing a colony and a college in the Nebraska territory