Centre College Board of Trustees

Title

Creator

Centre College Board of Trustees

Date

1819-1979

Description

Minutes from the Centre College Board of Trustees.

The Centre College Board of Trustees collection was compiled from a mass of papers found in various campus locations in the early 1980's. Since no clearly defined subdivisions existed, the material was simply divided by type of document, assigned a series letter, and then arranged chronologically.

Series A, approximately half of the collection, consists of correspondence to, or from, members of the Board and the secretary and financial agent/treasurer, who served as agents of the college's governing body. A significant percentage of the collection deals with fund raising efforts by Centre, and efforts by the financial agents to collect on subscriptions made to the college. Other prominent subjects include: The Kentucky School for the Deaf (then known as the Deaf and Dumb Asylum); efforts to select presidents; faculty relations; consolidation (and aftermath) of Centre and Central University (Richmond, Ky.); consolidation of Centre and Kentucky College for Women; Carnegie foundation grants; and erection of college buildings, particularly Old Main, the "new" Boyle Humphrey Gymnasium (Sutcliffe Hall) and the old octagonal Sayre Library.

This collection of correspondence is largely a "patchwork" collection and by no means covers all the vital issues tackled by the board since its inception. The correspondence, for example, from the 1820's to the 1850's is quite diverse, while the correspondence from the 1860's deals almost exclusively with efforts by the financial agent to collect on delinquent subscriptions. A central figure in much of the later correspondence is John Adison Cheek who served as treasurer of Centre from approximately 1889 to 1933.

Series B consists of perhaps the most important chronicle of Centre's history - the volumes containing the minutes of the Centre College Board of Trustees, 1819-1853, 1863-present. Minutes from 1819 through 1979 have been digitized, and are available from the Centre College Digital Archives.

Interesting circumstances surround volume 2 of the minutes. The volume had been missing for at least forty years when it was discovered by Dr. Miller Hillhouse in a shed between his Danville house on North Fourth Street and the home of Miss Mary Ashby Cheek on North Third Street. The minutes were believed to have been placed in the shed along with other old books and papers in the mid-1930's after the death of Miss Cheek's father, J. A. Cheek. The fate of the volume containing the minutes from 1853-1863 (one of the most interesting decades in Centre's history) remains a mystery.

Series C contains miscellaneous reports written by the Board, or committees of the Board, while Series D contains miscellaneous papers concerning the Board, including certificates or pledges for members taking the oath of office and texts of speeches and essays by members of the board.

Annual Reports to the Board may be located in CC-2 Centre College Presidents.

Public access to Board minutes may be granted for those minutes for which the President is no longer living, or 25 years past the date of the minutes, whichever is longer.