DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it right along to you. Now, picture the fall of 1890, September 16th, to be exact, and you're standing in Denton, Texas, looking up at a hardware store. Not a grand hall with columns, not a campus with a bell tower.
A hardware store. And up on that second floor, somewhere between the nails and the dry goods, seventy students showed up for the very first session of Texas Normal College and Teacher Training Institute. Seventy.
They found their seats, cracked their books, and got to work. Among those seventy were twenty-eight Creeks who had come all the way from Indian Territory; that's no small thing, and the marker doesn't let you forget it. The city of Denton itself stepped in to provide classrooms, which tells you something about how much was being improvised and how much was being believed in, all at the same time.
Presiding over this unlikely arrangement was a faculty of five, led by president Joshua C. Chilton, an educator who had already cut his teeth with experience and training back in Ohio and Indiana before Texas got ahold of him. By 1891, the school had moved.
It found a proper building at what would become the present site of North Texas State University. From a hardware store's second floor to a university, that's the arc. And here's what I love about the math: this marker was dedicated on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the school, in 1965.
Somebody understood that a story worth starting in a hardware store is worth commemorating too.
What the marker says
At this site, on the second floor of a hardware store, 70 students enrolled for the first session of Texas Normal College and Teacher Training Institute, September 16, 1890. The students included 28 Creeks from Indian territory. The city of Denton provided classrooms for the faculty of five under president Joshua C. Chilton, an educator with previous experience and training in Ohio and Indiana. In 1891, the school moved to a building at the present site of North Texas State University. This marker dedicated on 75th Anniversary of the University. (1965)