The foundation of Illinois's Northwestern University is…

The foundation of Illinois's Northwestern University is traceable to a meeting on May 31, 1850, of nine prominent Chicago businessmen, Methodist leaders and attorneys who had formed the idea of establishing a university to serve what had once been known as the Northwest Territory.

On January 28, 1851, the Illinois General Assembly grants a charter to the Trustees of the North-Western University, making it the first chartered university in Illinois.

The school's nine founders, all of whom are Methodists (three of them ministers), kneel in prayer and worship before launching their first organizational meeting.

Although they affiliate the university with the Methodist Episcopal Church, they are committed to non-sectarian admissions, believing that Northwestern should serve all people in the newly developing territory by bettering the economy in what will become the city of Evanston.

Prior to the 1830s, the area now occupied by Evanston was mainly uninhabited, consisting largely of wetlands and swampy forest.

However, Potawatomi Indians used trails along higher lying ridges that ran in a general north-south direction through the area, and had at least some semi-permanent settlements along the trails.

French explorers referred to the general area as "Grosse Pointe" after a point of land jutting into Lake Michigan about thirteen miles (twenty-one kilometers) north of the mouth of the Chicago River.

After the first non-Native Americans settled in the area in 1836, the names "Grosse Point Territory" and "Gross Point voting district" were used through the 1830s and 1840s, although the territory had no defined boundaries.

The area remained only sparsely settled, supporting some farming and lumber activity on some of the higher ground, as well as a number of taverns or "hotels" along the ridge roads.

Grosse Pointe itself steadily eroded into the lake during this period.

In 1850, a township called Ridgeville was organized, extending from Graceland Cemetery in Chicago to the southern edge of the Ouilmette Reservation, along what is now Central Street, and from Lake Michigan to Western Avenue in Chicago.

The 1850 census shows a few hundred settlers in this township, and a post office with the name of Ridgeville was established at one of the taverns.

However, no municipality yet existed.

The group of Methodist business leaders who founded Northwestern University and Garrett Biblical Institute in 1851 chose a bluffed and wooded site along the lake as Northwestern's home, purchasing several hundred acres of land from Dr. John Foster, a Chicago farm owner.