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Title
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122
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Transcription
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PERSONAL SKETCHES
ALLEN RICHARDSON BENTON
CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 1871-1876
The first chancellor of the University of Nebraska was Allen Richardson Benton. Chancellor Benton remained at Nebraska five years, during which he equipped University Hall, planned the campus, and increased interest in the institution by speech-making tours over the state. The period of Chancellor Benton's administration was the period of the grasshopper pague [sic], of drouths, and of consequent financial depression, but he remained long enough to see the institution well launched. During its early years the University had a hard struggle for its existence. A considerable portion of the inhabitants of the state were housed in dugouts and sod houses, and yet with an unusual vision of the future, they loyally sustained the University. It was during an especially distressing year that Chancellor Benton asked the regents to take about one-third from his salary and give it to an assistant professor.
I entered the University in September, 1873, attracted to the institution by an address delivered by the Chancellor at a teachers' institute in Sarpy county in the previous winter. Chancellor Benton took a keen interest in the young people who came under his influence. According to the custom of those days the Chancellor also performed the ordinary functions of a professor and regularly taught a considerable number of classes. Bred to the ministry, yet he was for that time very broad in his sympathies and liberal in his toleration. He had a peculiar faculty of making his students feel quite at home, and many appreciated an intimate friendship with him. The number of students was not large, and the classes, especially those doing university work, as distinguished from work in the preparatory school,
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Rights
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