The University of Minnesota was founded seven years before Minnesota became a state, chartered by the Minnesota Territorial Legislature and Governor Alexander Ramsey in 1851. Initially it was founded as a college preparatory school, to be governed by a board of twelve Regents elected by the Legislature. The University was also granted nearly 50,000 acres of land, which had been taken from the Dakota during the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux.

The University of Minnesota added to its land holdings in 1867 when it became the state’s land grant university under the terms of the Morrill Act. In 1862, the United States Congress passed the Morrill Act, which granted land to the states that they could use to fund public schools, including agricultural and mechanical Universities. The land in these grants was often taken from the Native inhabitants of the states, and Minnesota was no exception.

Here are several photographs from the late 19th century depicting campus buildings and activities at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. Old Main is the University’s first permanent building, shown below in 1885. It temporarily closed during the Civil War in 1861 and reopened in 1868.

William Watts Folwell was the first President of the University of Minnesota (1869–1884). He was an educator before coming to Minnesota, teaching mathematics at Hobart College in New York and Kenyon College in Ohio. When Folwell joined the University of Minnesota in 1869, there were eight faculty members, 100 students, and one building. During his tenure, he supported expanding the university’s focus on undergraduate education to postgraduate education. He was also a proponent of the idea of junior colleges in Minnesota. After his tenure as President ended in 1884, he stayed on as faculty and as the university’s librarian until 1907.

Folwell was followed by Cyrus Northrop, who served as the second President from 1884-1910 (pictured in center photo with glasses). Prior to his arrival at the University of Minnesota, he taught English literature and rhetoric at Yale University. During his tenure at the University, enrollment increased from 289 students to over 5000, the campus expanded from two buildings to 23, and the faculty grew to twelve times the size. In 1880 Maria Sanford was hired as the first woman professor at University of Minnesota, and in the state, teaching rhetoric and oratory until she retired in 1909.

Warren Clark Eustis and Henry Martyn Williamson were the University's first graduates in 1873. Two years later, in 1875, Helen Marr Ely became the first female graduate. Ely is pictured below, courtesy of the University of Minnesota Archives. The earliest African American to receive a degree was Andrew Hilyer in 1882, followed by the first African American woman graduate, Scottie Primus Davis, in 1904.

The University of Minnesota Duluth (formerly Duluth Normal School/State Teachers College) campus was established in 1947 through Legislative action, which placed it under the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota.

The origin of the University of Minnesota’s Crookston campus can be traced back to 1905, when the Northwest School of Agriculture opened with 31 students attending classes. Initially, it was a boarding high school for training people to work as farmers and homemakers. In 1965, the Minnesota Legislature approved funding and support for an Agricultural and Technical Institute to be located on the Crookston campus. In 1968, the Institute was renamed University of Minnesota Technical College, which it remained until 1988, when it became the University of Minnesota Crookston.

The University of Minnesota Morris is located on land that was used to house an American Indian boarding school. When the boarding school closed in 1909, the campus was transferred to the State of Minnesota with the stipulation “American Indian students shall at all times be admitted to such school free of charge for tuition." In 1910, the University of Minnesota established the West Central School of Agriculture to educate high school students.

In the 1930s, residents in Morris and Crookston Minnesota promoted the idea that the University of Minnesota should convert the agricultural high schools in their communities to junior colleges, and in 1933 bills were introduced to that effect, but ultimately failed. In 1958 an Advisory Committee on Junior Colleges to the State Board of Education recommended in their final report that Crookston and Morris get junior college facilities, but also noted those areas would need further study because they also had University of Minnesota agricultural high schools, and citizens supported converting the high schools into University branches. In the late 1950s the University of Minnesota announced they would be phasing out the agricultural schools. In 1959, the Legislative Commission on Higher Education, in their final report to the Governor, recommended that the Board of Regents develop college programs at the agricultural schools in Crookston and Morris. In 1960, the Board of Regents established a new four-year college in Morris.

The University of Minnesota Rochester was established by the state legislature in 2006 and approved by the University of Minnesota Board of Regents as a branch campus, operating as a satellite site since the 1960s.

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