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Austin Lyceum
On this day in 1841, the Austin Lyceum, an early debating and lecture society, was dissolved. The Lyceum was organized in February 1840, when President E. L. Stickney presided over its first formal meeting. A charter, the first of its kind granted by the Republic of Texas, was secured on February 5, 1841; it stated that the purpose of the Lyceum was the cultivation of the minds of the young men of Austin. Membership fees and dues were to fund a library and museum. A total of fifty names appear in the extant minutes; the members included lawyers, merchants, doctors, printers, and newspapermen. Meetings featured either a debate on a political or literary topic or a lecture or essay delivered by a member. When the organization was dissolved in April, 1841, it surrendered its charter to the Texas secretary of state, and provided that the money in the treasury should go to the family of county judge J. W. Smith, who had been killed by Indians. The Austin Lyceum was the forerunner of other such groups chartered at Galveston in 1845, at Houston in 1848, and at Brownsville in 1849.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- AUSTIN LYCEUM
- AUSTIN, TX
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- High court rules that Texas can sue in federal courts despite secession (1869)
- Empresarios receive colonization contracts (1825)
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