DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I tell it to you. The Northwest Texas Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church South, set out to build a college in 1870 and 1871; named it for Bishop E.M. Marvin, and planted it right here in what would become Waxahachie.
Now, this wasn't some back-of-a-napkin dream. The Waxahachie Methodists and others opened their hands wide: land, services, money, to bring the thing into being. And for a while, friend, Marvin College delivered.
It attained distinctions in music teaching and chemistry teaching. It housed an astronomical observatory that the marker calls an outstanding feature, and I'll let you sit with that a moment, because somebody out here on the Texas plain was pointing a telescope at the stars, and that is not nothing. Enrollment climbed to about two hundred and fifty souls.
Two hundred and fifty. That's a real college, with real ambition. But somewhere in the 1880s, the money started getting thin.
The college shifted its weight toward practical studies; a pivot, the kind institutions make when they're trying to hold on. It held on. For a little while.
Then in 1884, it closed. The City of Waxahachie stepped in and bought the property, and used it to house its original public school. So the building that reached for the stars ended up teaching the children of the town their first lessons.
Could've been a sadder ending. Could've been a lot sadder than that.
What the marker says
The Northwest Texas Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church South, built a college named for Bishop E.M. Marvin at the site in 1870-71. Waxahachie Methodists and others gave land, services, and money to develop the college. Distinctions were attained in music and chemistry teaching. The astronomical observatory was an outstanding feature. The enrollment reached about 250. Financially troubled, the college stressed practical studies in the 1880s, but closed in 1884. The City of Waxahachie then bought the property and used it to house its original public school.