DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, out here in Hunt County, the ground has a longer memory than most people give it credit for. This particular patch of Texas soil once held not one college, but two, and the story of how that happened is worth a slow mile or two of road.
Henry College came first, founded in 1892 by a pair of educators named Henry Bridges and Henry Eastman. Two men named Henry building a college together. You can't make that up, and I wouldn't try.
But Henry College didn't stay Henry College. In 1903, the institution was re-established and renamed, this time in honor of the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson, and so it became Emerson College. It ran its course and closed in 1907.
Two names, one site, and a story that fits inside fifteen years. Hunt County, though, was apparently serious about education, because that was far from the whole picture. Calhoun College operated from 1887 to 1899.
Texas Holiness ran from 1899 all the way to 1920. The Elmwood Institute opened in 1898 and closed in 1906. Burleson College lasted from 1895 to 1931.
And Wesley College carried on from 1914 to 1937. That is a lot of chalk dust for one county. Now, only one of those early institutions is still standing, still teaching.
East Texas State University, which opened in 1894, operates today in Commerce. The others came and went, and here is the thing the marker wants you to sit with. These colleges, short-lived as most of them were, belonged to a much larger wave.
More than two hundred colleges were chartered in Texas between 1836 and 1875 alone. Two hundred. And each one of them, however long it lasted, helped shape the early culture of this state.
The land moves on. The names fade. But something they built stayed.
What the marker says
Prominent early institutions. Henry College, founded in 1892 by educators Henry Bridges and Henry Eastman, was re-established and renamed in 1903 for writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. Closed 1907. Other early colleges in Hunt County were Calhoun (1887-1899), Texas Holiness (1899-1920), the Elmwood Institute (1898-1906), Burleson (1895-1931) and Wesley (1914-1937). Only East Texas State University (opened in 1894) still operates, in Commerce. Although short-lived, these colleges (like more than 200 chartered in Texas 1836-1875) helped shape early culture.