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Show solicit donations; send agents abroad; receive subscriptions; purchase books, maps, charts, and all apparatus necessary for the most liberal endowment of the library and scientific institution; employ professors and teachers; make by-laws; and establish branches of the University throughout the State; and do all other things that fathers and guardians of the institution ought to do." This ordinance was approved February 28, 1850. The same legislature that created the charter appointed Orson Spencer as Chancellor and the following Board of Regents: Daniel Spencer, Orson Pratt, John M. Bernhisel, Samuel W. Richards, W. W. Phelps, Albert Carrington, William I. Appleby, Daniel H. Wells, Robert L Campbell, Hosea Stout, Elias Smith, and Zerubabel Snow. The economic, social, political, and intellectual development of a people, is determined largely by geographical factors. People separated from each other by high mountain ranges, great deserts, and large bodies of water, develop local peculiarities and have local needs. These give rise to laws and customs that are distinctly individualistic. While the economic conditions lie at the foundation of laws to a large extent, yet economic conditions far from explain those legislative enactments of a people relating to their intellectual and moral preservation. The impelling motive of the Mormon pioneers was religion which affiliated itself with every phase of human life. It affiliated itself as a direct fire to business, industry, land army, etc., for the purpose of establishing fundamental practical ideals faithfully to Ethical life. All laws are the expression COUNCIL HOUSE, AN OLD HOME, AND WEST HIGH SCHOOL, ANOTHER OLD HOME of the industrial, moral and intellectual life of a people . This is definitely seen in the statutes of the early days of Utah. It is interesting to note that the first law passed by the Legislative Assembly of the Provisional Government of the State of Deseret was for the proper care of roads, the second law incorporated the University of the State of Deseret. This was in February, 1850. It is therefore, to the lasting honor of the pioneers of establishing the first university west of the Missouri River. The people had supported a university in their city of Nauvoo, 111., and had established a love for the cultural subjects of life, never to be forgotten in their long journey to the west. In the Nauvoo institution, courses in mathematics, chemistry, geology, literature, history, German, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were given, and the institution exerted an influence among many people in the State of Illinois. The organization of the Utah school was the expression of an ethical and aesthetic ideal, common to the people in those early days. At the first meeting of the Board of Regents held in Great Salt Lake City, March 13, 1850, a committee was appointed to co-operate with Governor Brigham Young in selecting a site for the location of a University, and also sites for primary schools. The minutes of this meeting tell us that "subscriptions were forthwith opened, and appropriations made by the Legislature of the States of Deseret to carry on the designs of the Board in forwarding the work, and the establishing of a first class "Parent School." At Page Twenty-six |
