William Milton Tryon and James Huckins Monuments

Baptist minister William Milton Tryon was the first to suggest that a Baptist university be established in Texas, beginning the push toward what would become Baylor University in 1841. District Judge R. E. B. Baylor quickly joined in the promotion of the idea, and they were supported by the members of the Texas Baptist Education Society, which was affiliated with the Union Baptist Association. James Huckins, the first Baptist missionary to Texas, was the University’s first full-time fundraiser.

These three men are credited as being Baylor’s founders, though there were many others who worked to see the University become established on its original campus in Independence, Texas.

On February 1, 1845, Baylor University’s charter was officially signed by Republic of Texas President Anson Jones. The University’s founders saw Baylor first and foremost as an institution for training Baptist ministers, but they also had an eye on the future. Early plans called for “an academical and theological institution” that would meet “the requirements of existing conditions,” but that also “would be susceptible of enlargement and development to meet the needs of all the ages to come,” as Huckins wrote in 1844.

A native of New York, Tryon was the second missionary sent to Texas by the American Baptist Home Mission Society. He served as the first corresponding secretary of the Texas Baptist Home Mission Society, as chaplain in the Congress of Texas and as treasurer of the Texas Literary Institute. In 1840, Tryon married Louise Higgins, a widow who owned several slaves that became Tryon’s property after the wedding. The Tryons soon moved to Texas, where the slaves worked on their 640-acre farm at Hidalgo Bluff. Tryon reorganized the defunct church at Washington-on-the-Brazos and conducted the first baptismal services ever held in the Brazos River, with the first convert baptized being an enslaved girl.

A native of New Hampshire, Huckins reached Galveston, Texas, in 1840 as a Baptist missionary. In addition to raising funds for Baylor University, he devoted 20 years to founding churches and preaching the gospel in Texas and served three times as president of the Baptist state convention. In the 1840s, Huckins owned slaves who were used in his Galveston home, and one member of Huckins’ church in Galveston issued an objection against his ministry in 1844 after allegedly hearing Huckins beating a female slave inside his house. In 1863, having moved to South Carolina, Huckins applied for an appointment as a chaplain in the Confederate army in Charleston — a commission he accepted with the rank of captain.

In 1843, northern newspapers condemned Tryon and Huckins for being slaveholders while serving as employees of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. As a result, Huckins resigned from the Society in 1845 and joined the Domestic Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, and both men soon were appointed home missionaries to Texas by the SBC.

Tryon died in Houston in 1847, and Huckins died in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1863.

The memorial pillars dedicated to William Milton Tryon and James Huckins were unveiled on Founders Day, February 1, 1945, as part of Baylor University’s centennial celebration. The pillars were removed in 2024 in conjunction with renovations to the area around the Judge Baylor statue, and information on the pillars (full text below) was added to the more complete story of Baylor’s founders and trustees.