Comments on: The Lesser-Known Namesakes of 4 Selective Schools

By: jose

jose — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:45:40 +0000

nice school

By: DaveP

DaveP — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 18:20:46 +0000

One of the stories at Duke is the reason why it looks like Princeton was the money was first offered to them. They didn’t want to change their name, so it went to Trinity with the caveat was make the campus look like Princeton.

By: Pink Coat

Pink Coat — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 18:19:49 +0000

Woohoo! Great to see Rice here. There is also a movie about William Marsh Rice’s murder. Personally, I think this is a perfect example of truth being stranger than fiction.

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:58:11 +0000

Thanks for the post- always up for some interesting historical trivia! One tidbit that stuck with me from his biography- Ezra Cornell also spent some time as a young man doing digging for the Erie Canal in Syracuse, where the foreman cheated him out of some of his wages. Later it was suggested he build New York’s land grant university in Syracuse rather than Ithaca, as Syracuse is more centrally located in the state, but he refused to go back there after his bad experience.

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:50:31 +0000

Regarding the Rice murder mystery, it should also be noted that the conspirator was his New York attorney, and the person who saved his fortune (and the university) was his Houston attorney, Captain James Baker, the grandfather of the former U.S. Secretary of State. Great story.