History of Westminster College

On September 29, 1849, Missouri Presbyterians met in a small country church near the village of Auxvasse in Callaway County. At this time, Missouri was still a pioneer state and large areas of land were unsettled; transportation was by river or stage line; the new state stood at the very edge of the frontier.

These problems, however, were not the concerns on the mind of one Kentucky man who attended the meeting, the Rev. William W. Robertson, who was pastor of the nearby Fulton church. Robertson was concerned about the area’s high rate of illiteracy, its lack of educational opportunities and the enormous problems these facts posed to the task of spreading the church’s work. What Robertson needed were young men prepared for the ministry and other Christian professions through educational training at a church-sponsored college. Robertson’s concern resulted in the establishment of Fulton College on February 18, 1851.

It is difficult now to appreciate the courage and faith necessary in such an undertaking. The state was slow to develop a system of higher education by means of the university and there was very limited wealth in Missouri with which to found colleges. In fact, the Presbyterian Synod of Missouri itself had reported at the annual meeting in 1845 a cash balance of two- and one-half cents. Undaunted by these obstacles, pioneers like Robertson combined their energy and assets to found Fulton College. The College’s first professor, William Van Doren from New Jersey, was employed at an annual salary of $800 and on the first Monday in October 1851, some 50 young men attended the first classes. In 1853, the Synod of Missouri adopted Fulton College and gave it the Presbyterian name “Westminster.” Then, on July 4 of that year, the cornerstone of the first college building, old Westminster Hall, was laid. Although the original hall was destroyed by fire in 1909, the columns from the portico of that stately structure were preserved. They still stand today as a reminder of the College’s glorious past and as an inspiration for the future.

After nearly a decade spent establishing a tradition of academic excellence, the College was faced with the turbulence of the Civil War and the conflict of existing in a town with Southern sympathies occupied by Union troops. Westminster not only survived, it managed to graduate classes uninterrupted through the war years-something no other Missouri college or university outside St. Louis was able to do. Bitter post-Civil War antagonisms split the Missouri Presbyterian Church, creating major financial difficulties for Westminster. The College was able to continue largely because of an unusually capable and dedicated faculty. Professors such as John Harvey Scott and John Jay Rice became renowned for their scholarship, devotion to the school and belief in education. These early professors set high standards for college faculty that have characterized Westminster ever since.

At the close of the civil strife, Presbyterians and all other people in Missouri were divided into North and South. Westminster became an institution of the Southern Presbyterian Church and for many years, because of impoverished post-war conditions, received little more than local patronage or help. Finally, in 1891, the course of events was altered by a bequest of approximately $125,000 from the estate of Mr. William Sausser of Hannibal, Missouri. This gift, at that time the largest single bequest ever made to an educational institution in Missouri, rewarded the sacrifices and labors of those who had struggled to insure the continuation of the college and allowed Westminster to move forward with new vigor and enthusiasm.

In 1901, after 40 years, the Synod of Missouri of the Northern Presbyterian Church and the Synod of Missouri of the Southern Presbyterian Church reunited in support of Westminster. This union was maintained until 1969, when Westminster College and the Presbyterian Church agreed to sever legal ties. In 1984, Westminster College and the Synod of Mid-America of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approved a covenant, which recognizes that the College and the church remain independent entities but affirms a historic and continuing relationship of mutual concern and support. Despite a tragic fire, two world wars, a crippling national depression and other adversities, enthusiasm has never waned at Westminster. It has continued as a small, high-quality institution and a leader in liberal arts education.

One structure on the Westminster campus that serves as a symbol of the College is the campus chapel, the Church of St. Mary, the Virgin, Aldermanbury. Originally erected in 17th century England in the shadows of a quite different Westminster, the church was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1670 and was located in London at the corner of Aldermanbury and Love Lane. During the 1940 German blitz, the church received a direct hit from an incendiary bomb. The interior was totally gutted by the blast, but the exterior walls remained standing. Those 700 tons of Portland limestone were carefully dismantled in the mid-1960s and shipped across the Atlantic to Fulton, where the building was painstakingly rebuilt and restored to its original condition.

Today, the church and its museum and library stand as a memorial to Sir Winston Churchill, commemorating the man and his historic visit to Westminster College in 1946. Churchill came to Westminster at the invitation of the College and then U. S. President Harry S Truman to deliver one of his most significant speeches, originally titled “The Sinews of Peace,” but now commonly known as “The Iron Curtain Address.” In this historic speech Churchill uttered the following famous and portentous words: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent…” Sir Winston’s speech was one of the John Findley Green Lectures, a distinguished series on economics, social and international affairs. Established in 1936 as a memorial to John Findley Green, an 1884 Westminster graduate, the supporting fund stipulates, “that the speaker shall be a person of international reputation whose topic shall be within the aim of those lectures and who shall present it with regard for Christian tolerance and practical benevolence.”

The roster of Green lecturers includes theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, former President Harry S. Truman, Nobel laureate physicist Sir George Paget Thomson, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, author and scientist C. P. Snow, Senator J. William Fulbright, FBI Director Clarence Kelly, former President Gerald R. Ford, former Prime Minister of Great Britain Edward Heath, the Honorable Clare Booth Luce, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, President George Bush, philosopher Paul Ricoeur, former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Robert S. Strauss, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and Lech Walesa, Nobel Laureate and former President of Poland.

Other annual lectures at Westminster College include the endowed IBM lecture series, which brings to the campus leaders or professors in the area of business and finance and the Crosby Kemper lectures, in which authorities on British history and Sir Winston Churchill come to speak at the Churchill Memorial.

Westminster College is distinguished by more than impressive buildings and notable speakers. Since the employment of Professor William Van Doren well over a century ago, the College’s faculty has been composed of outstanding men and women totally committed to undergraduate teaching. Today over 74 percent of the faculty hold the doctorate degree; many are published authors; several have received Fulbright grants; others are engaged in advanced research and scholarly study. At Westminster the faculty is part of a unique learning environment, where student and teacher work together to discover answers to the complex problems faced in and out of the classroom and, in the process, establish lifelong personal friendships. Historically a men’s college, Westminster admitted its first coeducational class in the fall of 1979.

This system of close relationships obviously works and the proof is that nearly half of Westminster’s graduates have pursued advanced study and an unusually high percentage of our graduates have been honored with prestigious graduate-level scholarships. Four Westminster students have been awarded the highly prestigious Rhodes scholarships for study at Oxford University in England and a 1997 alumna was awarded the prestigious Truman Scholarship for graduate study. In addition to academic honors, Westminster alumni have led 40 of America’s educational institutions and achieved eminence in all fields, particularly in business administration and the professions of medicine, dentistry, law and the ministry. In addition to accolades won by alumni and faculty, Westminster College has been recognized in a recent article in The Washington Post as one of the Top 20 “Hidden Gems” among U.S. colleges and universities.