Concordia Normal School located in

Concordia, Kansas Concordia is a city in and the county seat of Cloud County, Kansas, United States. It is located along the Republican River in the Smoky Hills region of the Great Plains in North Central Kansas. As of the 2020 census, the population of the ...

was a state-funded

normal school A normal school or normal college is an institution created to train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum. In the 19th century in the United States, instruction in normal schools was at the high school level, turni ...

operated by the

Kansas Kansas () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its Capital city, capital is Topeka, Kansas, Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita, Kansas, Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebras ...

state government from 1874 until 1876. Concordia Normal began on March 10, 1874, with Professor E. F. Robinson as the Principal. The school opened for students on September 16 that same year. In 1875, former State Superintendent H. D. McCarty was named president of the college. Sixty-six students were enrolled in the first year and in 1875 enrollment more than doubled to 171 students. Some in the area and in the state government felt the opening of the school was premature due to lack of development in the area, a recent

grasshopper Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are among what is possibly the most ancient living group of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grasshopp ...

infestation and

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

. Depending upon state aid, the school closed on March 18, 1878 (a little before that of the Leavenworth Normal School). Following the "Miscellaneous appropriations bill of 1876" state normal schools were then consolidated to what is now

Emporia State University Emporia State University (Emporia State or ESU) is a public university in Emporia, Kansas, United States. Established in March 1863 as the Kansas State Normal School, Emporia State is the third-oldest public university in the state of Kansas. ...

.A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans
"State Normal School, Concordia" by William E. Connelley, transcribed by Carolyn Ward, 2000

References

Education in Cloud County, Kansas Defunct universities and colleges in Kansas Educational institutions established in 1874 Educational institutions disestablished in 1876 1874 establishments in Kansas 1876 disestablishments in Kansas {{Kansas-university-stub