John S. Tanner, Henderson Co., TX

Henderson County Texas

The name of John S. Tanner, Jr., is not widely known on Baylor's campus today. But for a twist of fate, however, it is likely that he would have filled the place in the university's history that now belongs to Samuel Palmer Brooks. Tanner was born on October 9, 1869, in rural Henderson County near Athens, the youngest of an extended family of fifteen children. Both parents were from cultivated backgrounds, so that young Tanner came naturally by his strong desire for education. With his family's assistance he was able to complete his early schooling in Athens and Malakoff and then to enroll in 1886, a few weeks before his seventeenth birthday, in the first session of Baylor at Waco. Serious by nature, Tanner entered single-mindedly into his academic career. He was always to be found studying, and read even as he walked to and from his classes. Though ministerial students were permitted a relaxed curriculum, Tanner could not accept the notion that preachers should be less well educated than laymen. Instead, he pursued all the scientific, mathematical, and classical language studies he could fit into his schedule, earning his A.B. Degree in 1890. Soon after graduation, Tanner married. Remaining at Baylor, h e taught while he and his wife prepared themselves for advanced studies at Brown University. During this time he taught Samuel Palmer Brooks and Pat M. Neff, both of whom were undergraduates during the early 1890s. Brooks admired his teacher greatly and became his lifelong friend and correspondent, though even he recognized that Tanner's strict manner of teaching may have been "too severe." Brooks observed that those students who were capable of the academic rigors Tanner demanded of them usually grew to appreciate or even to love him. When borderline students were subjected to his austere personality, however, Brooks believed that Tanner's methods were sometimes more likely to discourage their desire to learn than to stimulate it. Before the Tanners' preparations for Brown University were complete, Mrs. Tanner became ill and died, and Tanner left Baylor alone to enroll in Southern Seminary. Three years later he married Mary D. Barton, another Baylor graduate who was a student at the seminary. The couple would become the parents of three children. Upon completion of their seminary work, the Tanners moved to Chicago where he undertook further studies in Greek and Hebrew. Shortly before he would have received his doctoral degree, Baylor persuaded him to return to Waco, and in 1896 he joined the faculty to teach New Testament, Hebrew, Greek and, as the occasion required, mathematics. He also accepted a pulpit in East Waco. Tanner's vision for Baylor's development was broad and ambitious. Among the many changes which he brought about or promoted where the elimination of the relaxed curricula for women and for ministerial students; sponsorship by the literary societies; inception of Baylor's academic summer school, summer Bible school, correspondence courses, cadet corps, and foreign mission band; organization of the Adelphian Society for ministerial students; and creation of the Baylor University Bulletin as a vehicle of publication of faculty research. So highly did the trustees regard Tanner's ability and his dedication to the university that many persons believed he would eventually succeed Oscar Henry Cooper as Baylor's president. Indeed, he very probably would have filled that role had he not suddenly died on March 21, 1901, at the age of thirty-one, presumably of the combined effects of influenza, and abscessed tooth, and a congenitally weak heart. Though he may have failed to become president, Tanner did leave a legacy to the leadership of the university. When Cooper resigned and left Baylor the following year, the trustees' choice for the new president fell upon Tanner's devoted friend and former student, Samuel Palmer Brooks, as the man who would guide Baylor through the next three decades. The Baylor Line, 1992

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