Founded in 1875, the State Normal College of Tennessee was the result of a post-Civil War gift from George Peabody. Born in Danvers (now Peabody), Massachusetts, in 1795, he became an incredibly-wealthy merchant and international financier. (His one-time junior partner was Junius Spencer Morgan, father of J. P. Morgan. In fact, the House of Morgan was successor to the firm built by George Peabody).[1] In 1837, he had moved to London, a center of world banking. Alarmed by reports and personal letters sent to him at the end of the war, Peabody established a fund designed to enable the American South to rebuild and develop its educational system. In a letter he wrote to a friend in February 1867, he said it was "the duty and privilege of the more favored and wealthy . . . to assist those who are less fortunate."[2] He called together a board of sixteen American leaders, two of whom were General Ulysses S. Grant and Admiral David G. Farragut, and entrusted to them $1 million. The proceeds of the endowment were to be used "for the promotion and encouragement of intellectual, moral, or industrial education among the young of the more destitute portion of the Southern and Southwestern States of our Union."[3] In time, the board would determine that this meant the eleven states of the former Confederacy plus West Virginia.
Notes
[1] Paul K. Conkin, Peabody College, 103.
[2] Ibid., 104.
[3] Ibid.
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