Southwestern University

Southwestern University was formed initially as Texas University by the five Methodist Episcopal Conferences of Texas in a convention of April 1870 that merged four earlier colleges – Rutersville College, Wesleyan College, McKenzie College and Soule University. Rev. Dr. Francis Asbury Mood was named president of Soule University in Washington County in 1868. After he took office, plans begun to relocate the school and create a centralized Methodist university. At the same time, city leaders in Georgetown began plans to established a college. A community school was built and opened in 1870 in Georgetown on the site John J. Dimmitt and G. W. Glasscock, Jr. donated. In 1873 the property was chosen to become the new site of Southwestern University which was granted a union charter in 1875. In 1879, a new building for the Young Ladies Department was completed four blocks east of the main campus. The first intercollegiate baseball game in the state of Texas took place in 1884 when Southwestern played the University of Texas. The University moved to its present site in Georgetown in 1900.