Governor and Education Proponent William Henry Harrison Raises Money for the Northwest’s First University

This was the first formal educational lottery conducted in the American Northwest

William Henry Harrison was a Virginian and the son of Declaration of Independence signer Benjamin Harrison. He was appointed Secretary of the Northwest Territory on June 26, 1798, and in 1799 was elected a territorial delegate to Congress, where he served until May 1800, when he was appointed the first Governor of the Indiana Territory, an area that then included all of the original Northwest Territory except Ohio. The 27-year-old Harrison served as Governor for twelve years. His dual responsibilities to secure justice for the Indians and to acquire Indian land were often contradictory, but his administration was generally able and honest. During his governorship his military career was enhanced when he defeated the Indians at Tippecanoe in 1811. He was given command of the Army of the Northwest in the fall of 1812, just after war was declared with Great Britain, and resigned as Governor a few months later. His forces decisively defeated the British and Indian at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, saving the Old Northwest for the United States.

After Harrison came to Vincennes, the capital of the territory, he helped in 1801 to organize Jefferson Academy for instruction of the children of the settlers and the Indians of the area. This was the first educational institution in Indiana Territory, which consisted of what are now the states of Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and a portion of Minnesota; and it is thought to be the second oldest such institution west of the Alleghenies.

In December of that same year, Harrison and five other trustees of Jefferson Academy petitioned the United States Congress for a donation of land to be used for the development of an “Institution for the Education of Youth.”  In December 1802, a “general convention of the [Indiana] Territory,” called and chaired by Harrison as governor, included in its list of “representations to the Congress of the United States” a request for federal assistance for education.  In response to this petition, in 1804 Congress adopted an act for survey and disposal of public lands and provided that in each of the three land districts established in Indiana Territory (Detroit, Vincennes, and Kaskaskia) one entire township was to be reserved for a seminary of learning, the township to be designated by the secretary of the treasury. Now Harrison and his colleagues were successful in obtaining a land grant as an endowment for the new institution of learning. The grant consisted of a six-mile-square congressional township.

Shortly thereafter, on November 29, 1806, the territorial legislature incorporated “the Vincennes University” – not a college or a seminary – but a “university.” The newly chartered school, which took over the activities of Jefferson Academy, was to receive the township of land already set aside by Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin. The preamble of the chartering act indicates that the legislature, struggling to establish an orderly society in the wilderness, had high hopes for the new institution. It reads:

AN ACT to Incorporate a University in the Indiana Territory.

WHEREAS the independence, happiness and energy of every republic depends (under the influence of the destinies of Heaven) upon the wisdom, virtue, tallents and energy, of its citizens and rulers.

And whereas, science, literature, and the liberal arts, contribute in an eminent degree, to improve those qualities and acquirements.

And whereas, learning hath ever been found the ablest advocate of genuine liberty, the best supporter of rational religion, and the source of the only solid and imperishable glory, which nations can acquire.

And forasmuch, as literature, and philosophy, furnish the most useful and pleasing occupations, improveing and varying the enjoyments of prosperity, affording relief under the pressure of misfortune, and hope and consolation in the hour of death. And considering that in a commonwealth, where the humblest citizen may be elected to the highest public office, and where the Heaven born prerogative of the right to elect, and to reject, is retained, and secured to the citizens, the knowledge which is requisite for a magistrate and elector, should be widely diffused.

Be it therefore enacted by the Legislative Council and House of Representatives, That a University be, and is hereby instituted and incorporated within this Territory, to be called and known by the name, or style of the “Vincennes University”… .

Also granted by the act was the authority to conduct a lottery as a means of raising funds for the university, and a lottery to raise $6,000 was in fact authorized by the university’s Board of Trustees in 1806. This is the first formal educational lottery conducted in the American Northwest.

Document signed, 1807, being one of the original Vincennes lottery tickets, signed by Harrison as Governor, entitling the “possessor to such Prize as may be drawn against its number.”

The document is also signed by trustees Waller Taylor, William Bullitt, George Wallace Jr., and Toussaint Dubois.  Waller Taylor was appointed chancellor of the Indiana Territory in 1807. Also in 1807, he became a major in the territorial militia. He fought against Native Americans and served as an aide-de-camp to William Henry Harrison during Tecumseh’s War in 1809 and then participated in the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811.  Toussaint Dubois was a Montreal-born Frenchman and American soldier who joined with Lafayette to fight for American independence in the Revolutionary War.  As a captain, DuBois commanded the Company of Spies and Guides of the Indiana militia at the Battle of Tippecanoe. He also served as a Major in the War of 1812, commanding the Kentucky Mounted Spies.

Note on provenance and rarity: While lottery tickets signed by George Washington and John Hancock regularly appear on the market, our records find no other lottery ticket signed by Harrison having appeared in at least the past 40 years and perhaps longer.  This is perhaps the case because while the University did survive and still exists, the lottery did not sell well and not many tickets were issued and survived.  Those few that do appear to be in institutions. This was acquired directly from the Harrison descendants, who retained it for over two centuries, and has never before been offered for sale.  It may well have been Harrison’s own ticket, purchased to support the endeavor.