Mallalieu University

The bishop the school was named for was a New Englander. Willard Francis Mallalieu, born in Sutton, Massachusetts, on December 11, 1828, and a graduate of Wesleyan University, was elected a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1884. His name went on a second school, about a thousand miles southeast: Forest Home Seminary at Kinsey, Alabama, opened in 1882 with Northern Methodist support, burned in 1885 and was rebuilt as Mallalieu Seminary. Teaching grades one through twelve, it lasted until October 31, 1923, decades after Bartley's university closed.

What the plaque says

Mallalieu University In June 1886 the townsite of Bartley was platted on land owned by the Reverend Allen Bartley, a minister of the Methodist Church. The previous year, Methodist Bishop Mallalieu had proposed this site as the location for a church-affiliated institution of higher education, and in April 1886, the Reverend Bartley was authorized to establish a University here. By July some 27 buildings had been erected in the new town. The University, named for Bishop Mallalieu, was opened in September 1886, with an enrollment of sixty students. Courses were taught in the liberal arts, music, and business. The first class was graduated in the spring of 1888, and that summer, construction began on the first of the permanent University buildings, Haddock Hall, which was located a short distance north of this point. The Hall was not completed however, as drought and adverse economic conditions soon forced the University to close its doors. The school never reopened, and the bricks from Haddock Hall were later used in the construction of the Methodist Church of Bartley, the only reminder of this early attempt to bring higher education to southwest Nebraska. High Plains Historical Society Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Senator George Norris State Historic Site — 17 mi
  The McCook house George W. Norris kept as his home base for forty-two years, given to the state with its furniture by his wife Ellie, by the senator who wrote the lame-duck amendment.

More markers nearby

• Indianola POW Camp — 6.0 mi
• Pawnee Woman's Grave — 6.3 mi
• Burton's Bend — 16 mi
• George William Norris, 1861-1944 — 17 mi