The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 63, July 1959 - April, 1960 Page: 263

A Iistoy of Kidd-Ke4 CoIkc
RUTH O. DOMATTI
NORTH TEXAS FEMALE COLLEGE, at Sherman, Texas, des-
tined to be one of Texas' foremost female educational
institutions until the 1930o's, was established in 1877 by
a contract made between the state of Texas and the North Texas
Annual Conferencel of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
The contract terminated years of planning by the conference, for
in 1868, that body had resolved, "That the Bishop ... appoint a
committee ... for the purpose of looking out a suitable site and
obtaining ... bids for the erection of a Female College."2 The
appointed committee reported at the next session (1869) of the
conference that although Sherman, Texas, subscribed the high
bid of $9,000, the committee felt the amount insufficient for im-
mediate establishment of the school and therefore requested a
postponement of definite action by the conference. In answer to
the request, a resolution was passed providing that a subscription
of $50,000 be required before the conference would locate the
college.3
The cattlemen's frontier with a population of less than one
hundred persons per one thousand square miles was only 150
miles west of Sherman, the town offering the subscription.4 Sher-
man, seat of Grayson County, was a small town, but an important
one because of its commercial activity. Produce from all over the
county was brought to market in the town square, with cotton,
potatoes, and watermelons filling the markets in season. Wagon
trains from the buffalo country were also in evidence, and often
single trains carrying as many as eighty thousand stinking green
(untanned) buffalo hides pulled into the square. Sherman was
lA conference is the governing body of a geographic division of Methodist
churches.
2Minutes of the Second Annual Session of the Trinity Conference of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church, South (Dallas, 1869), 7.
8Ilbid., 11.
4R. N. Richardson, Texas: The Lone Star State (New York, 1943), 300-302.