Dr. Grady Early, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, taught math and computer science at Texas State University for 29 years, serving briefly as interim chair of the newly-formed Computer Science department. After retirement, Early began researching his family history and gained some familiarity with various research tools: ancestry, familysearch, newspapers, San Marcos Record archives, findagrave and many more. This made it easy for him to segue into the histories of non-family members, which is how he began to write a story about Southwest Texas State Normal School in San Marcos, also known as San Marcos Normal, which is now Texas State University. This series will highlight the first staff at San Marcos Texas State Normal School, starting with some background information about the school in its early days.
Some background is in order.
In 1870, Texas legislators were increasingly concerned about the state of public education. The decennial census had been released, and it didn’t paint a pretty picture. The Texas population stood at about 820,000 including about 190,000, age 10 or older, who could not read, and about 222,000 who could not write.
