Support for higher education

 I’m pretty sure that some of my mother’s people were among the original illegal immigrants in Texas.

In the days of Spanish rule, it was illegal for English-speaking people who were not Catholic to enter the realm. I’m pretty sure that some of my ancestors were in the woods of East Texas before it was legal.

They were sharing the woods with Cherokee people, before almost all of them were shamefully forced off their lands in 1839. My grandmother told tales of Old Larissa, a community in Cherokee County. Some of the old timers spoke of the victims and survivors of the Killough Massacre as if the family knew them.

The old-time nature of the family came out in odd ways. I’m fond of the University of Texas, but my mother spoke reverently of Southwestern, the oldest college in Texas.

That memory got me thinking about what “education” must have meant to my ancestors, who admired it from afar.

In our time, fewer states have fought harder to undermine public education at all levels. But in the 1800s, people believed that Texas needed improvement and that education would do the trick.

People did unusual things to support the founding of a college.

J. Frank Dobie tells the story of the Rev. Andrew Jackson Potter, a Methodist minister who was assigned to raise $500 for Southwestern. The prevailing wage was $1 a day.

Potter raised $200 by the deadline. But he knew a gambler who wasn’t above methods that insured success. Potter gave the $200 to the gambler, who doubled it in one hand.

Potter met his fundraising goal. There are no reports of ethical qualms.

• J. Frank Dobie, Prefaces; Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975, p. 31.