Old Gold likes milestones, especially when the University of Iowa celebrates them. Just this past year, for instance, we surpassed the quarter-million mark for number of baccalaureate and first professional degrees granted (official total to date: 251,611, according to the Office of the Registrar). If all of those degrees were placed end to end, they would form a paper trail stretching perhaps 75 miles. If they were stored in an archives, the sheepskins would occupy about 90 shelf feet.

And who was the first to take their rightful place in this long and distinguished line? Meet Dexter Edson Smith (1839-1928), SUI class of 1858.

Mr. Smith was truly in a class of his own, being the only individual to receive the Bachelor of Science degree in June 1858, 11 years after the university was created by the State of Iowa but only three years after its first classes were held. On that day four others received diplomas from the normal (teacher training) department, a division separate from the university’s collegiate department; Smith’s degree was the first baccalaureate conferred by the latter division.

The Dorset, Vt., native came to Iowa City with his parents in 1846, when he was 7. After receiving his degree, he taught in Missouri and New York and, following his marriage in 1860 to Ellen Frances Hutchins, joined the Freedmen’s Bureau, working in Virginia and North Carolina. In 1867 he returned to New York, joined the Oneida Community, a utopian society, and became a professional photographer. Over the next 14 years, he chronicled Oneida life with his photography, some of which is represented online as part of a collection of historical records at Syracuse University: http://library.syr.edu/digital/images/o/OneidaCommunityPhotos/

In 1881 Mr. and Mrs. Smith moved to Santa Ana, Calif., where he became a citrus farmer and civic activist, and was involved in the development of Orange County. He was something of a Renaissance man, dividing his time between horticulture and the study of economics, physical culture, and religion, according to the February 1912 Iowa Alumnus. He died Feb. 9, 1928, at age 89.

With the exception of a few newspaper clippings, the University Archives had no primary source material on the university’s first graduate — until recently. In November, archives staff uncovered a letter from Smith to SUI professor of education Forest Ensign, dated 22 January 1913. Ensign was gathering responses from noted SUI alumni for a commemorative history, and Smith’s reply was among those received (see image below).

To learn more about Smith’s role in the development of Orange County, see Spencer Olin’s article, “Bible Communism and the Origins of Orange County,” in the Fall 1979 issue of California History.

—David McCartney, University Archivist

Note: Old Gold often uses the university’s original and official name — The State University of Iowa (SUI) — in historical contexts. See this December 2010 article for more about the university’s names.

Letter from Dexter Edson Smith to Forest Ensign, 22 January 1913 [Papers of Forest Ensign (RG 99.0220), University Archives, Department of Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries]

Portrait, undated [F.W. Kent Collection (RG 30.01.01), Students series, University Archives, Department of Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries]

A page from the second catalog of the State University of Iowa, 1858, listing its first graduating student [General Catalogues Collection (RG 01.08), University Archives, Department of Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries]