Abilene Christian University

Abilene Christian University opened on September 11, 1906, with twenty-five students. The school was founded by A. B. Barrett and named Childers Classical Institute, after J. W. Childers, who sold the board five acres and a large house at a reduced rate for a campus. During the first six years the college had four presidents: Allen Booker Barret (1906–08), H. C. Darden (1908–09), R. L. Whiteside (1909–11), and Alonzo B. Cox (1911–12). In 1912 Jesse Parker Sewell, an energetic young preacher who had originally come from Tennessee to West Texas because of tuberculosis, accepted the presidency. He served from 1912 to 1924 and solidified the school. Batsell B. Baxter was the next president, from 1924 to 1932. During his administration the college grew steadily. The institution was officially renamed Abilene Christian College on April 16, 1920, though from the beginning it had been known as the Christian College or the Abilene Christian College. In February 1976 the name of the institution was again officially changed, this time to Abilene Christian University.

The college was originally beside the railroad tracks in what was then the west part of Abilene. The 5½-acre campus became 6½ acres, and several good buildings were erected. By the 1920s the board of trustees saw that the growing institution would have to have additional land. They bought 680 acres of open ranchland on the northeast edge of Abilene and received some additional acreage by donation. They set aside a tract of land for a campus and subdivided the remainder of the property into residential and commercial lots. In 1928 and 1929 eight new buildings were erected, and in the fall of 1929 the twenty-fourth session opened on the new campus. To finance the move the trustees voted bonds totalling $500,000. The crash of 1929 impeded sales of the bonds, and lots that had been sold were turned back to the college by buyers who were no longer able to pay for them. Abilene Christian College was faced with possible foreclosure. But in 1934 John G. Hardin and his wife, benefactors from Burkburnett, gave the college good securities that retired the entire debt. This one act put the institution on a sound footing.