Ramsey County History – Spring 1974: “Macalester and Its First Forty Years”

Macalester and Its First Forty Years
Author: Edward Swanson

Most of Macalester College’s first 40 years consisted of Edward Duffield Neill’s efforts to get it off the ground. Neill came to St. Paul as a young clergyman in 1849, founded the First Presbyterian and House of Hope churches, the Baldwin School, which had an off and on existence, and two colleges that never came into actual being. After the Civil War and postwar government service, Neill returned to Minnesota and tried again. He got a Minneapolis building from Charles Macalester, persuaded the Presbyterian Church to adopt his Macalester College (still then just a name), acquired land in St. Paul, and found a new president, Thomas McCurdy. Macalester College held its first classes in September 1885, with Neill on the faculty. Neill died in 1893 at age 70.
PDF of Swanson article