At the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (later Texas A&M), the state’s first public institution of higher learning, classes in history were offered from the very beginning. When the school opened its doors in 1876, its mission was to provide a broad education for the people of Texas, fulfilling the mandate of the Morrill Act (1862) as one of the nation’s newly created “land grant colleges.” The legislation empowered states to establish schools where the “branches of learning…related to agriculture and the mechanic arts” would be taught alongside “scientific and classical studies.” (1) History was central to this modern educational pursuit. As history professor, department head, and university historian Henry C. Dethloff would later put it, “In order to evaluate change, we need to have a sense of the past from which we are derived.” (2)