Like today, the business race went to the swift, including those able to pump out reams of correspondence in precise penmanship. Teaching penmanship and shorthand at the college level may seem odd today, but the world did not yet have mechanical means of recording the spoken word or creating correspondence, short of typesetting. However, the Morrill Act of 1862 advanced agricultural and mechanical research and education by creating the land grant universities, many of which grew into large universities, populating the Power 5 football conferences today.Īnalogously, commercial colleges like Gem City taught practical business skills such as bookkeeping, penmanship, and shorthand. The typical American college and university of the time focused on studying Latin, Greek, mathematics, and other liberal arts. Gem City Business College reflected America's move from an agricultural to industrial economy, as people moved from farms to cities large and small. The same year saw the founding of Gem City Business College.

Such was Quincy's growth that the 1870 Census showed it to be Illinois' second-most-populous city. Situated on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River at the point Illinois bulges farthest west, Quincy was an early transportation hub, particularly after a railroad bridge crossed the river north of town in 1868. One school that battled on the gridiron more than a century ago was the Gem City Business College of Quincy, Illinois. As described in an earlier post about schools that dropped football, however, a wide range of schools once played the game and each has its place in the history of college football. We tend to think of college football in terms of the Power Five teams that dominate play at the highest level, so it is easy to think of those schools as defining football's past.

Gem city college school of horology