The Founding of Illinois State Normal University: Normal School or State University?

[...]Charles E. Hovey, the University's first principal (the title was changed to president in 1866), was asked point blank in 1859 at the first convention of the American Normal School Association why his normal school had been called a university.3 The other oddity in the statute was the General Assembly's charge that the Normal University not only prepare teachers in "all branches of study which pertain to a common school education," for example, arithmetic and spelling, but also "in the elements of the natural sciences, including agricultural chemistry, animal and vegetable physiology." Illinois had squandered the income from this University Fund in the same way it misused the money in the Seminary Fund.28 Turner proposed originally at Granville that the six per cent interest Illinois paid on the money it had borrowed from these two funds be used to maintain the industrial university. Since the private colleges had long coveted these funds and since Wright insisted that they be used to prepare teachers, Turner suggested instead in March 1852 that Congress grant each state, not the proceeds from the sale of public lands, but rather sufficient federal acreage so that each state could endow an industrial university. Marshall, Grandest of Enterprises, 18-19, note 47, cites Cook and adds that Wilder was a contributor to the Illinois Teacher during Hovey's editorship. Since Murray's letter was written less than a year after the passage of the 1857 Act, I am inclined to give Post the credit for the name, though admittedly, Wilder could have suggested it to Post. 45 Journal of the House of Representatives of the Twentieth General Assembly of the State of Illinois at Their Regular Meeting, Begun and Held at Springfield January 5, 1857 (Springfield, 1857), 970-1, The party affiliations were determined by the vote for the Speaker of the House on January 5 (p. 5). 65 Bigelow's words were known immediately at the University. Since Carbondale, Charleston, Macomb, and DeKaIb had already changed their names from teachers to state colleges and broadened their purposes, a reporter for the Pantagraph, preparing the centennial edition of the paper, asked the president of the Teachers College Board, Lewis M. Walker, Class of 1913, about the University's future.