William Jewell College is a private, four-year
liberal arts college of 1,050 undergraduate students located in
Liberty, Missouri,
U.S. It was founded in 1849 by members of the Missouri
Baptist Convention and other civic leaders which included Robert James, a Baptist minister and
Robert S. James, father of the infamous Frank and Jesse James of the James Gang. It was associated with the Missouri Baptist Convention for over 150 years, and it has a large collection of materials from Baptist history. Well respected in its field, Jewell was chosen by
Time Magazine as its 2001
Liberal Arts College of the Year.
[1] The school maintained ties to the Missouri Baptist Convention until severing them over a dispute concerning
evolution[2] and
homosexuality[3] in 2003.
The college is named after Dr. William Jewell, who in 1849 donated $10,000 to start a Baptist school. It was the first four-year men's college west of the Mississippi River. Jewell, who was from Columbia, Missouri, had wanted the school built in Boonville, Missouri. However, Liberty resident Alexander William Doniphan argued that donated undeveloped land in Liberty would be more valuable than the proposed developed land in Boonville, and Liberty was eventually chosen. Judge J.T.V. Thompson donated the hilltop land on which the campus sits. In the American Civil War during the Battle of Liberty, the main building on campus, Jewell Hall, was used as a hospital, infirmary, and stables for the United States Army. Union troops were buried on the campus. After the war, two sons of co-founder Robert James, Jesse James and Frank James, staged the first daylight bank robbery at the Clay County Savings Association four blocks west of the campus the James-Younger gang inadvertently killed George Wymore, a student who was across the street from the bank.
In 1926, the John Gano chapel was built, based on a donation from Gano's great-granddaughter,[4] Elizabeth Price, who lived in Kansas City. Price gave the money for the chapel with provisions that the chapel be named for Gano, that the school take over maintenance of the Gano family cemetery between Liberty and Excelsior Springs, and that it hang a painting of Gano baptizing George Washington in the Potomac River during the American Revolutionary War.
The painting has generated controversy over whether the event actually occurred, discussed in the September 5, 1932, issue of Time.[5] Washington was baptized as a child into the Episcopal Church and worshiped at Episcopalian churches. Gano was a chaplain in the Continental Army during the war. According to the Time article, Washington one day went to Gano, who was also the founding minister of the First Baptist Church in the City of New York, and proclaimed
