When they arrived in Altus, Alex discovered that he had walked into yet another awkward situation. Burrow had quit under pressure, and at the last minute he tried to withdraw his resignation. As Rev. Anderson later confided, it was a “perilous moment” in the life of the college, “with dynamite enough . . . to blow up the whole enterprise.” The board voted to hire Alex Millar.
At age 26, Alex was enough of a visionary to see what the school could be instead of what it was, a desperate institution scrambling to stay on its feet. Running a small college might be precarious, but it was vitally important to the intellectual life of the region. Colleges like CCI were not just training grounds for Methodist ministers, though Alex considered that role important. They also supported a small intelligentsia who could inoculate a larger group with progressive values. That “hot moment” at the board meeting marked a crucial turning point for the college and for the future of higher education in the state of Arkansas.
| Alex was resented as a condescending Northerner—which, of course, he was. The faculty issued a public denial, calling these “slanderous lies,” and Alex started “agitating” to move the college elsewhere. The Methodist conferences took him seriously and asked for sealed bids from towns that wanted a college. Eight towns submitted proposals, and Conway won. The new college would have a new name: Hendrix, after Methodist Bishop E. R. Hendrix. The church sold the Altus campus and the last commencement of CCI took place there on June 17, 1890. |
The board agreed to let Burrow stay on as financial agent and professor emeritus. Tensions ran high, but Alex jumped right in. He asked his mother to approach her brother, John Caven, to endow the college. “Help me,” Alex pleaded. He figured that $25,000 would be just enough to get the college on a firm footing. “None of [Caven’s] relatives need or want the money, and in this way, he could build an enduring monument for the Caven name. . . . ‘Caven College’ would be a nice name, would it not?” he coaxed. Whether or not Ellen ever approached her brother, no large donation materialized.
Lizzie found Altus boring: “There is no society here and nothing of interest but the College and the scenery,” she complained to her mother-in-law, “but it would make a pretty place for a quiet home.” She took over the “primary department” from Isham Burrow’s daughter, also called Lizzie.
The young Millars boarded several students, and after the long school day was done, Lizzie found herself cooking, cleaning, doing laundry and ironing. “I suppose this will happen every year,” she wrote Alex’s parents back in Brookfield, “and I don’t know what will become of me. Don’t think I am complaining, but I get very much provoked and a little discouraged sometimes.”
Alex himself seldom complained, though his workload was crushing. He quickly fired most of the original faculty and hired two of his Neosho colleagues to teach English and math, a move that infuriated the Altus community. Alex himself taught psychology, ethics, logic, physics, Greek, Latin, political science, sociology, and the Bible. He also took care of most administrative tasks, kept the books, recorded grades, prepared transcripts, and hired and fired faculty. In between he tried to recruit students and raise enough money to keep the college afloat. The primary department was dropped in the fall of 1889, leaving Lizzie without a job.
Alex’s brother George joined them in Altus, studying for a degree at CCI and helping out around the house. They sometimes traveled to nearby Ozark to shop and have fun, although, according to George, it was “not a very prepossessing town.” George was the comic of the family, always ready to comment on the foibles of his elders. He made fun of visiting ministers and quickly got in trouble for breaking a college rule against speaking to girls. He carped, teased and ranted in ways that the rest of the family never did, and so his letters are more fun to read than any of theirs.
Yet George was proud of his sober older brother and traded on Alex’s reputation. “All I have to do in any store to get a bargain is to say I am Pres. Millar’s brother,” he wrote home to Brookfield. “The Faculty is almost worshipped by nine tenths of the students.”
The people of Altus were another matter. They accused Alex and his faculty of being cold and unsociable, bad teachers and harsh, cruel, disciplinarians. Alex was resented as a condescending Northerner—which, of course, he was. The faculty issued a public denial, calling these “slanderous lies,” and Alex started “agitating” to move the college elsewhere. The Methodist conferences took him seriously and asked for sealed bids from towns that wanted a college. Eight towns submitted proposals, and Conway won. The new college would have a new name: Hendrix, after Methodist Bishop E. R. Hendrix. The church sold the Altus campus and the last commencement of CCI took place there on June 17, 1890. Lizzie’s sister Margaret Harwood was one of the graduates.
The move to Conway