Dr. Tim McNeese, Professor of History
D
uring its 132-year existence, nothing altered the history of York College more than an aberrant spark in the attic of Old Main, YC’s first building of size. It was the centerpiece of the original campus, a grand old pile of bricks, towering up on East Hill, rising 110 feet from its foundations to the tip of its flagpole, a 45-star national emblem waving in a stiff Nebraska breeze above the grassy plains of the early 1890s. It stood as a monument to the possible, a symbol for humans whose reach exceeds their grasp. In 1870, York was little more than one lone house. Less than a decade had passed since the passage of the Homestead Act and the Transcontinental Railroad had just been completed the previous year. The railroad reached York in 1878, and the town sprang to life. Over the intervening dozen years, progress was planted on the plains. Beyond a bank, a post office, dry goods stores, and a newspaper, a school was envisioned. In 1880, the Methodists opened theirs—the Nebraska Conference Seminary—with their literature describing their school as located in a “thrifty section of the state, in a town where there never had been a saloon.” They set up shop in January in the original Congregational Academy building located on the west end of Seventh Street. (While the building is gone today, Academy Avenue remains.) The school did well for a time, moving to a new brick facility located close to the site of today’s St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. (The building—now gone—would later house the Ursuline Sisters, an order of nuns, and even later still would become St. Joseph’s Academy.) The seminary became a college in 1883 and was officially renamed Methodist Episcopal College of Nebraska, but often the locals just simply referred to the school as if it were theirs—as York College. The college boasted a dozen instructors and had an enrollment of 313 by 1885. Tuition ran between $6 and $7 per term. Many of the college’s students focused their studies on teacher education and business courses. But even as enrollment climbed, so did debts, and by 1888, the Methodists closed the doors, with the Catholic Church taking over and reopening the facility the following year as Ursuline Academy. Meanwhile, the Methodists moved to Lincoln and opened a new school—Nebraska Wesleyan University. With its first “college” having come and gone within a single decade, the people of York sought out another religious group to establish a college in their prairie community. Land was selected
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for a college by local citizens on York’s East Hill. Then, enter the United Brethren. In 1886, the UB Church had purchased, from a group of Baptists, Gibbon Collegiate Institute, located in Gibbon, NE, about 70 miles east of York. The academy there ran from 1886 until 1890, “under the auspices of Western College, in Toledo, IA.” But Gibbon proved an awkward place for a college. The town was too small, and local citizens never fully bought in. Financial problems were exaggerated by a severe drought that hit the region. Church officials decided to close the Gibbon school and move their operations to York, once the Methodists had packed up and left. When the UB opened their new school, they named it York College. Ironically, the UB Congregation in York had been established just three years earlier. It is from this time-distant place—York, Nebraska, 1890— that our story begins to take on a life of its own, one, ultimately, of endurance; one that has seen fitful starts and stops; financial crises and historical drama; problems and praises. Over the next 132 years, York College would not only endure but would thrive, progress, spread out, even as those offering its classes, raising its buildings, and guiding six generations of young men and women would themselves change, with each new generation of instructors, administrators, staff, students, alumni and various and sundry well-wishers. The story of York College is, in some respects, two stories linked in purpose and place. The United Brethren laid the groundwork for the college on the hill with 11 presidents steering the ship for more than 60 years. Those stalwart men of faith,
