Untitled - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

CORNELL UNIVERSITY
FOUNDATION AND ENDOWMENT
Cornell University was incorporated by the Legislature of the
State of New York on April 27, 1865, and was opened on October 7,
1868. The existence of the University is due to the combined wisdom
and bounty of the United States, the State of New York, and Ezra
Cornell.
By an act of Congress, approved July 2, 1862, provision was made
for a grant to the several States of public lands, thirty thousand acres
for each Senator and Representative in Congress, from the sale of
which there was to be established a perpetual fund "the interest of
which shall be inviolably appropriated, by each State which may take
and claim the benefit of this act, to the endowment, support and
maintenance of at least one College where the leading object shall be,
without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including
military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to
agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures
of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the
liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several
pursuits and professions in life."
The States that had within their borders a sufficient extent of
public lands "subject to sale at private
$1.25
entry"
at not more than
an acre were to be permitted to locate their shares of the grant
upon those lands. Other States might not locate their shares, but
were to receive instead the due amounts of scrip, which they were to
sell, devoting the proceeds to the purposes of the Act. Purchasers of
the scrip were to have the right of locating on any of the unappropri
ated lands of the United States "subject to sale at private entry at
$1.25
an acre or less,"
except that not more than one million acres
might be selected in any one State and that no mineral lands what
ever might be selected.
The share of the State of New York was 990,000 acres. The
scrip was delivered to the Comptroller of the State, who was author
ized, by an act of the Legislature passed May 5, 1863, to receive it
and, with the approval of other State officers, to dispose of the
whole or portion any of it. He sold 8,000 acres at 83 cents and 68,-
000 acres at 85 cents, receiving $64,440. He sold little because other
States were offering their scrip at lower prices.
Meanwhile Ezra Cornell was meditating a project which he came
to formulate in the words "I would found an institution where any
study."
person can find instruction in any In a union of his own re
sources with the proceeds of the land grant he saw a way to the real
ization of his purpose. Such a union was effected by an act of the
Legislature passed April 27, 1865, establishing Cornell University
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