From its beginning as one of the first institutions of higher learning west of the Mississippi to its current role as Oklahoma’s premiere regional university, one thing hasn’t changed at Northeastern State University.

That’s its commitment to turning out graduates with the talents, skills and dedication to serve this community and region, or wherever their careers take them.

For the past year, NSU has celebrated its centennial. The just-published NSU Centennial History book will allow alumni and other supporters of the university to have a glimpse into the past, including some little-known facts. Dr. Brad Agnew, professor of history, has experienced 42 years of NSU’s growth, coming to Tahlequah in 1968.

He brings that personal familiarity, as well as his academic experience writing two previous history books and numerous articles, to the task of writing the centennial book.

“I’ve seen all kinds of changes — name, students. It really is a kaleidoscope,” he said.

A glance from the window of his third-floor office in Seminary Hall reveals the differences. When he came in 1968, coeds wore dresses, male students wore ties and dress slacks. Agnew taught wearing a jacket and tie. Today’s attire, for faculty and students, is far more casual.

“They had a myriad of rules,” Agnew said of his first days on campus. “You couldn’t wear shorts anywhere on campus, except for the gym, or back to your car.”

“Something else that I never saw — it must have ended before I came — was freshman hazing. You had to wear a beanie with a button on top and if a senior said ‘button,’ you had to bow over so he could see the button,” he said.

He told how Jack Dobbins and his late wife, Zula Belle, related stories of their student days shortly after World War II, when the weeknight curfew was 10 p.m.

“They had to be in and registered by 10 p.m. Just a few minutes until 10 an old gentleman would come to the door to lock up. The coeds would come running from the bushes. She [Zula Belle] said, ‘We called him Mr. Birth Control,’” Agnew said.

Back then, students typed their term papers on typewriters and looked up the books they needed at the John Vaughan Library in a card catalog. Today everything is high-tech and digital, from the extensive use of online data to the omnipresent cell phones. Laptops are as much, or more, of a campus staple than the spiral notebook and pen. And who remembers slide rules?

The centennial book features photos and vignettes detailing all those details of campus life and brings back memories.

Even at mid-century, NSU was a far cry from the early days, when students at the Cherokee Female Seminary and Cherokee Female Seminary walked or came in wagons to their institutions of higher learning, which were considered quite modern for their time. The buildings, completed in 1851 at Park Hill and on the south side of Tahlequah, were the largest in Indian Territory at the time and quite a marvel for area residents.

Agnew’s book recounts how the Female Seminary principal and assistant principal were recruited from Mount Holyoke and paid $800 and $600 per year, respectively. Oswald Woodford, a Yale graduate, was unaware of the cultural accomplishments of the Cherokees when he joined the Male Seminary faculty, and brought corn as a gift. He was surprised to learn corn was already a mainstay of the Cherokee diet, and even more surprised when he arrived in Indian Territory and stayed at Rose Cottage, the mansion of Chief John Ross.

The centennial history provides many details of the early days at the seminaries, the difficulties suffered during the Civil War, and the institutions’ revival in the postwar years. After the Female Seminary burned in 1887, it was moved to Tahlequah, with Seminary Hall, completed in 1889, serving as the foundation for the establishment in 1909 of the state facility that eventually would become NSU.

Just like its students’ fashions, NSU’s name has changed over the years. It first was known as a normal school, with the mission of preparing teachers for rural schools in the area. It later became a teachers college, then Northeastern State College, then Northeastern Oklahoma State University, or NEOSU. Agnew relates that President Roger Webb succeeded in changing the name to NSU, as the shortened version would fit better on a cap, as well as in other places.

Agnew said NSU was not authorized to grant college degrees until 1919. In 1939, it became Northeastern State College, and could award degrees in majors other than education. The late L.L. Culver was the first to receive one of those degrees, as a pre-med student. However, he did not pursue a medical career, but became the longtime owner of Reed-Culver Funeral Home.

The master’s program came 20 years later, under the objection of Oklahoma’s flagship universities, the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University. They wanted to maintain a monopoly on graduate-level programs.

“A lot of public school teachers needed to get master’s degrees, and it was a hardship to have to go to Normal or Stillwater,” he said.

Creation of the master’s degree program at NSU brought another, unanticipated step — integration. Black teachers from the area came to study at NSU.

“One of the hardest things to do was document the integration of NSU because it was really a nonsubject,” Agnew said. “I think there was one letter to the editor in the newspaper that made reference to the fact,” Agnew said.

Today, NSU has a variety of programs and degree paths, and changes its curriculum to respond to the needs of today’s students. But it remains true to its origins as an educational mecca for prospective teachers.

“In northeastern Oklahoma, I think the majority of teachers have some connection to Northeastern,” Agnew said. “NSU probably is the most respected education program in the state. We graduate more teachers than either of the flagship universities.”

It took Agnew about five years to research and compile material for the book. When NSU officials decided to organize a committee to plan the centennial celebration, they approached Agnew, He was reluctant to serve on a committee, but volunteered to compile the centennial history.

He was able to do most of his research at the John Vaughan Library, using copies of the Northeastern newspaper and copies of regents’ minutes. He read old issues of Tahlequah newspapers and the Daily Oklahoman. He traveled to Oklahoma City for other research, and relied also on conversations with past and present NSU faculty and alumni.

He fondly remembers Dr. T.L. Ballenger, a member of the faculty from 1914, who was still teaching when Agnew came to campus and who lived past his 100th birthday. Ballenger was a fountain of institutional memory.

“I would be doing historical research and I would go over to his house,” he said. “He knew where the bodies were buried.”

Vickie Sheffler, university archivist, was instrumental in assembling the material for the book and in providing photos for the coffee table edition.

During his research, Agnew turned up many little-known aspects of NSU’s past. What was the most unusual?

“One of the things that created more notoriety than anything else — In the 1930s there was a Chinese student on campus, learning to be a missionary,” Agnew said.

The student encountered two sisters, also students, who were running some sort of scam. They tried to get him involved in it.

“The freshman sister accosted him on the steps on the east side of Seminary Hall and shot him several times as he was running across campus,” Agnew said. “There were stories in the Daily Oklahoman and even the New York Times.”

The Chinese consul became involved before the situation was resolved. The Chinese student survived, and his assailant was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon and sentenced to three months in the county jail.

Agnew said all sorts of things have happened on campus. After all, you can’t have thousands of people occupying a place over more than 100 years without creating quite a history.

“There are all kinds of things that you have never heard about that were interesting, That was the problem with going through those old newspapers. There was so much that was interesting,” Agnew said.

“You can never recreate the past. There’s so much you can only guess at.”

Researching the newspapers left him with many unanswered questions. For example, a story might discuss the second year an event had happened. But, going back, he could find no mention of the previous year’s event.

Also, many organizations and activities simply ceased to be, without their demise being noted. One was a Sadie Hawkins dance that flourished on campus for a number of years, then vanished without trace, at least without a published trace.

Although the coffee table book is printed and complete, the online version, which is far more detailed, remains a work in progress. Agnew plans to add to it as needed, and as new material is uncovered. It may never be finished.

“There was more paper than I could go through in a lifetime,” he said.

“You have to miss things, and that’s one reason I’m glad to know the comprehensive book is online.”

Check it out

You can check out the digital online version of the NSU Centennial History by visiting the Northeastern State University website. Under the academics subhead, click on libraries, then on JVL digital collection.