Joseph Denison (pastor)
| Joseph J. Denison | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
October 1, 1815 Bernardston, Massachusetts |
| Died | February 19, 1900 (aged 84) Manhattan, Kansas |
Joseph J. Denison (October 1, 1815 – February 19, 1900) was a Methodist pastor; the first President of Kansas State University; and a founder of Manhattan, Kansas, having volunteered to go to Kansas Territory with the New England Emigrant Aid Company in 1855 to fight against the extension of slavery.
Denison was born in Bernardston, Massachusetts and raised in Colrain, Massachusetts. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1840, and then served as a Methodist pastor in Massachusetts until 1855.
In 1855, Denison was convinced by his brother-in-law, Isaac Goodnow, that he should move to Kansas Territory to help establish a new town for the New England Emigrant Aid Company. On March 13, 1855, Denison joined a party of Company members leaving Boston, and made his way to Kansas Territory, which was soon to boil over with violence. (See Bleeding Kansas.) Over the next several years Denison was part of a small group that settled and built the abolitionist town of Manhattan, Kansas, at the union of the Kansas River and the Big Blue River in the Flint Hills.
By 1857 Denison and Goodnow, along with others, hatched a plan to create a Methodist college in Manhattan. In April 1857, at a meeting of the Methodist Church Conference, a plan for the college was properly inaugurated. The following year, on February 9, 1858, Manhattan's "Blue Mont Central College" was incorporated by act of the Kansas Territorial Legislature and Territorial Governor James Denver. By 1860, a large building was erected and the school was open and operating, with Denison as President. However, the institution was already struggling financially.
When Kansas was admitted to the United States in 1861, one of the first things the new state Legislature planned to do was to establish a state university. After two years of political wrangling, on February 16, 1863, the state accepted Manhattan's offer to donate the Blue Mont College building and grounds, and established the state's Land-grant university at the site – the institution that would become Kansas State University.
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