April '24 Trivia Time‪!‬ The 981 Project Podcast

Welcome new subscribers! One monthly newsletter is devoted to Ohio River trivia, and always includes ten questions. It’s the rare person who can answer all ten correctly without a deep dive into each topic. Do your best and have fun while learning something new.
Before delving into the trivia questions, I’ll prime you for this month’s topic with historical background on higher education in the Ohio Valley.
* The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided for settlement and government of the territory and stated that “…schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” I talked about this when reviewing David McCullough’s book, The Pioneers.
* Before the Northwest Ordinance was approved by the Confederation Congress, a group of Revolutionary War veterans became land speculators by forming the Ohio Company of Associates. They used their Certificate of Indebtedness (an IOU for unpaid service during the war), to buy half a million acres of Ohio land near the mouth of the Muskingum River.
* “The appeal of this idea was that it offered to provide (a) a source of funds for the newly formed nation, (b) an opportunity for veterans of the Revolutionary War to get some value from the depreciated scrip in which they had been paid, (c) a scheme for orderly settlement of a frontier area, and (d) an opportunity for financial gain by the initial investors.” Source.
* “Provisions of the contract with the Confederation Congress included setting aside two townships in the center of the purchase for a university. These two townships were called ‘College Lands.’" Ohio University was established on them in 1808. Source.
QUESTIONS
Answers are in the footnotes.
* In 1828, Ohio University conferred an A.B. degree on John Newton Templeton. What is Mr. Templeton’s historical significance ?
* He is the namesake of the Templeton Prize, which honors people whose works “affirm life's spiritual dimensions” with an award of over one million dollars. Past winners include Mother Teresa, physicist Freeman Dyson, and ethologist, conservationist, and activist Jane Goodall
* He was the first Black graduate of OU and the fourth Black man to graduate from a college in the U.S.
* Both
* In 1873, Margaret Boyd received her B.A. degree and became the first woman to graduate from Ohio University. Soon after, the institution graduated its first international alumnus from which country?
* France
* Turkey
* Japan
* This Indiana college was established in 1801 by William Henry Harrison (the ninth U.S. President) while he served as governor of the Indiana Territory. It is now a university. Name that university.
* DePauw University
* Valparaiso University
* Vincennes University
* In 2004, four college students set out to steal several volumes of some of the world’s rarest books from the first educational institution west of the Alleghenies. This institution was established in 1780 by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and its rare books were valued at more than $5.7 million. Name the university.
* Spalding University
* Transylvania University
* Tusculum University
* Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act on July 2, 1862. The Act committed the federal government to grant each state at least 90,000 acres of public land (30,000 acres for every senator and representative in the state). States could sell these lands to benefit higher education by building new institutions or improving existing ones. Which Ohio River Valley institutions are recipients of the 1862 Morrill grants? (choose as many as apply).
* Ohio University
* The Ohio State University
* University of Kentucky
* West Virginia University
* “Who” were land-grant institutions designed to serve? (Choose all that apply)
* “Sons and daughters of toil”
* Residents of states where training in agriculture, mechanical arts, and military science were largely unavailable
* Future farmers, teachers, and engineers
* On Aug. 30, 1890, Benjamin Harrison, the 2