The Viability of El Meta Bond College post-1920

Shortly after 1920, when Meta Sager sold El Meta Bond College to a con man, the school went out of business. Given the growth of public education in twentieth-century America, it is tempting to assume that the school was not viable anyway. However, in Oklahoma, as late as 1935 nearly 60 percent of public schools were conducted in one-room school houses.[1] In fact, there was a good chance that Sager's college might have survived in one form or another. For example, it might have been moved to a town with a larger population. Or, it might have been adopted by a larger school somewhere else in Oklahoma. Consider the destinies of two colleges in Oklahoma, both established around the same time as El Meta.

In 1895, the Congregational Church founded Kingfisher College in present Kingfisher, Oklahoma. The school fell on hard times when the U.S. mobilized for the Great War. By 1922, it closed its doors and became part of the University of Oklahoma. A vestige of the school survives to this day as the Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at OU.[2]

In 1894, William Robert King, a Presbyterian minister, established Henry Kendall College in Muskogee. In 1907, the school was moved to Tulsa during its oil-boom phase. And in 1921, it became today's University of Tulsa.[3]

Notes

[1] Danney Goble, "Education in the Young State," in Historical Atlas of Oklahoma, 167.

[2] Ibid.; Carolyn G. Hanneman "Kingfisher College," in Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, 1:801-02.

[3] Goble, "Education in the Young State," 167; Linda D. Wilson, "King, William Robert (1868-1951), EOHC, 1:799-800; Marc Carlson, "University of Tulsa," EOHC, 2:1543-44.