Sarah's father -- Joseph Wood, a wealthy Rhode Island cotton manufacturer -- presented them with what was probably the most elegant house in Dakota Territory at the time. He believed that even on the frontier a minister should live in a refined, dignified style.

The imposing 18-room brick mansion was built on the east side of Mulberry between Fifth and Sixth streets which in those days was virtually "out of town." Completed in November of 1873, the home became a center of social activities in the capital, and many vital political issues of the day were discussed in the parlor by the prominent men of the Territory.

According to George Harrison Durand, Ward's biographer, the horses of the old Sioux City stagecoach were so accustomed to delivering guests to the house that, when the driver would be drowsing, they would stop at the house from force of habit.

For the next several years Rev. Ward devoted himself to his ministerial responsibilities and the affairs of the Yankton Academy. His congregation grew from a "mere handful" to more than 200, including William A. Howard, governor of Dakota, and Gen. W. H. H. Beadle, territorial superintendent of public instruction.

The early months of 1881 included two meetings in which Rev. Ward played a major role. The first was on Jan. 12 when members of the Congregational Association braved winter storms to come to Yankton where they voted in favor of locating a new college in the territorial capital.

It was decided, though, to delay the final decision until May 25 when the Association would convene again in Canton. Ward and Ephraim Miner -- probably his closest friend -- made the trip by horse and buggy, swimming the team across the swollen Vermillion River behind a skiff on which they had loaded the buggy.

At Canton the Association voted unanimously that Yankton College would be the Territory's first institution of higher learning; and on Aug. 30, 1881, the institution was chartered as a private corporation under the laws of Dakota Territory.

Ward's first task was the raising of funds to convert the idea into physical reality. It was a formidable undertaking. The citizens of Yankton gave some $11,000 to secure a building site of 20 acres on the northern outskirts of the town, and varying sums were contributed by members of Congregational churches visited by Ward throughout the Territory. Even though their church had been destroyed in the 1881 flood, the Vermillion parishioners gave $166.34.

On June 15, 1882, the cornerstone of the first building -- the Conservatory -- was laid, following a gala procession from downtown, including a band, the mayor, various other dignitaries and several hundred school children, each carrying a bouquet of flowers to place on the copper time capsule to be buried under the stone. They say a thousand spectators witnessed the ceremony.

Actually, Yankton College's first classes were held in the chapel of the Congregational Church with five students in attendance. The original faculty consisted of Prof. William M. Bristol, who had been head of the Yankton Academy, and his wife, Rosa.

On May 13, 1883, Joseph Ward resigned as pastor of the Yankton church to devote his energies to his new position as president of the college. His principal job was that of fund-raiser. It was a struggle from the beginning: to secure faculty (at a salary of a thousand dollars a year "to be paid in time"), financing the single three-story building on the barren College Hill and providing for a student body which had already grown to 108 in the second year.

Although he hated what he called "begging from door to door," Ward traveled to the East in search of contributions, being quite successful at first. Unfortunately, a theological controversy developed in 1886 over the "future probation of infants and heathens who died without the knowledge of Christ." Because Ward sided with the more liberal views of the Andover Seminary, he was accused by Eastern conservatives of fostering heresy at the college and they withheld funds. The feud reached all the way back to Yankton where some of his friends of earlier days turned against him.

It was a bitter time for the dedicated minister-educator, but he persisted, arguing that the college did not exert theological influence over its students. Then, in June of 1887, his labors found fulfillment when he conferred the bachelor of arts degree on the first graduating class -- one lone individual, Edward Hinman Pound.

Sad to say, the intensity with which Dr. Ward pursued his various interests took its toll. Prior to the college's first commencement, he learned that he was suffering from diabetes, then considered a fatal malady.

Though his work continued unrelentingly, he had to fight against ever increasing exhaustion. Going upstairs, and even walking, became painful efforts. The proclamation of statehood lifted his spirits, but he was continually burdened by knowledge of the indebtedness of the college which he was unable to resolve in his lifetime.

In the fall of 1889 he developed a carbuncle on the side of his neck, a condition more severe than a boil and intensified because of his weakened physical condition. Without antibiotics and the medical advancements of a later time, blood-poisoning (as infection was then called) set in, and on Dec. 11 he died in his fifty-second year.

His final instructions to the trustees of Yankton College -- who came to his bedside as did family, friends and faculty members -- was: "Do not stop anything for me. The work must go on no matter what becomes of the workers."

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In its early years, Yankton College would continue to experience development highs and fiscal lows throughout the next quarter century following Ward's death.

When Prof. Albert Tallman Free -- former member of the Territorial Board of Regents -- became the college's second president in 1892, the physical facilities of the school consisted of two buildings: the Conservatory, then known as Middle Hall, and Ladies' Hall, which was occupied belatedly after a violent windstorm on May 6, 1889 -- not to mention lack of funds -- delayed construction.

In the meantime, Dr. Ward had borrowed $29,000 from Rev. Charles Ray Palmer of Bridgeport, Conn., with a mortgage on the college property as security. When President Free took over after an interregnum period of more than two years, the school newspaper, The Yankton Student, reported that he faced "a crushing load of debt."

Spirits were raised momentarily when a New York woman decided to leave her estate to the college, but after her death the will was contested and set aside. Then Dr. D. K. Pearson, a wealthy Chicagoan, announced: "I will give to Yankton College a science hall costing $50,000, provided the friends of the college will pay its debts and raise an endowment of $100,000 before July, 1893."

This was a heady, time-consuming challenge for President Free and his associates as they literally begged for funds in Yankton and elsewhere. When the initial effort failed to meet the goal during the depression year of 1893, Pearson generously agreed to extend his deadline.

Various gifts -- large and small -- eventually satisfied the donor, and the three-story Ward Hall of Science was dedicated in the fall of 1894. Earlier the building site "was marked out by a plow drawn by the hands of enthusiastic students."

That same year construction was begun on an astronomical observatory on the north edge of what had been Yankton's first cemetery. Edward L. Clarke, a state financial agent from Howard, had offered to pay for the $2,800 brick structure as a memorial to his father, the late Joseph B. Clarke of Oberlin, Ohio.

Up till that time the college's astronomy students were invited to use the small private observatory of Yankton businessman, John T. M. Pierce. The new Clarke Memorial Observatory housed a seven-inch equatorial refractor telescope, built by the renowned firm of former machine-tool makers, Worcester Warner and Ambrose Swasey, then of Cleveland. The telescope was a gift of A. Cummings Dakin of Clinton, Mass., who had become acquainted with Yankton College through Rev. Dewitt S. Clark, pastor of his Clinton church and a brother-in-law of Dr. Joseph Ward.

Dakin had visited the college before Ward's death; and because he and his wife had shown continuing interest in the school, Ladies' Hall was renamed Dakin Hall in their honor.

In the fall of 1895, Rev. Henry Kimball Warren, former head of Salt Lake College, succeeded President Free. At that time the college consisted of four buildings, a faculty of 14, 231 students, a library of 4,600 volumes and an endowment of $50,000. It looked as if the institution had finally rounded the fiscal corner -- but then the indebtedness began to build up again.

In 1900 another fund drive was begun -- and according to William J. McMurtry in his book, Yankton College: A Historical Sketch -- President Warren conducted the campaign so vigorously and skillfully that every debt was paid and $55,000 was added to the endowment. McMurtry continued:

"This splendid outcome of the struggle was celebrated by the students with bonfires, the blowing of horns, class yells and waving of colors. After the bonfires had subsided, a great crowd of citizens and students proceeded to Ward Hall where speeches were made ..."

In keeping with that optimistic spirit, the trustees passed a resolution that "it should be a fixed policy of the institution to keep clear of debt, and that the utmost effort should be put forth to close each year without a single dollar of indebtedness."

Unfortunately, the good intentions did not last. New buildings were added, and by 1909 the college was again in debt by more than $20,000. The trustees voted against cutting salaries (then at about $1,200 annually per instructor) and decreasing the number of faculty members -- but that meant still another fund drive.

This was the pattern which would be repeated throughout the entire existence of the school. The 25 years after Dr. Ward's death then ended in disaster on April 8, 1914.

At 8:15 in the morning of April 8, 1914, Ella Hendrickson, a Yankton College student living on the fourth floor of the women's dormitory, smelled smoke.

She and her roommate, Ruth Hakes, opened their door and were horrified to find the building on fire, the attic ablaze above them and the flames already reaching down to the floor they were on.

They and another girl -- the three of them only partially dressed -- rushed down the stairs to inform Mabel Etnyre, the dean of women, and matron Lillian Harvey. The Yankton fire department was quickly called as the 25-year-old Dakin Hall -- with its upper floors built of wood -- turned into a fiery furnace.

The firemen desperately battled the blaze, but the lack of water pressure made their hoses pathetically inadequate. When a downtown main broke, there was no water at all, and by 9:30 a.m. the central chimney came crashing down. By noon only the shell of the building remained.

In the meantime, though, a frantic effort was made to save the dormitory's contents.

Yanktonians responded quickly to the loss. Even before the fire was out, rooms in private homes, hotels and lodge halls were volunteered for the 32 young women who resided in the building. Fantles and other business firms offered replacement clothing as more than 30 trunks stored in the attic -- where the fire of unknown origin erupted -- were destroyed. A temporary kitchen and dining hall was set up in the college gymnasium to feed the students.

Most fortunate was the fact that the fire started late in the morning when all but several girls were down to breakfast. A night-time blaze might well have resulted in tragic loss of life.

According to the paper, the trustees carried just $18,000 of insurance in more than a dozen different policies for the building valued at $30,000. Only $1,500 of insurance covered the estimated $16,500 lost in furnishings and students' belongings.

Dr. Ward considered the dormitory vital to the institution's future because he was convinced that parents would not send their young girls to school unless they could live "under the watchful eye of a matron and preceptress." Work on the structure began in the spring of 1889, but a violent storm in May caused considerable damage and delayed construction.

Dr. Ward lived to see the building completed but not occupied when he died on Dec. 11, 1889, at age 52. Ladies' Hall, as it was originally known, was renamed Dakin Hall in 1894, honoring A. Cummings Dakin of Clinton, Mass., a generous contributor to the school.

Despite severe fiscal limitations -- a continuing problem for the college -- the decision was made to build another dormitory on the same site. Exactly one year after the fire, the cornerstone for the replacement facility was laid by Dr. Leonard C. Mead, superintendent of the State Hospital and a member of the college board of trustees.

Preceding the ceremonial sealing of the stone were speeches by U. S. Senator William H. McMaster and 86-year-old Rev. Lucius Kingsbury of Sioux Falls, a surviving member of the original trustees. He had tramped over the bare campus grounds with Dr. Ward before there were buildings or trees as they contemplated the future institution then but a hopeful dream.

Contents of the metal box encased in the cornerstone included books and papers relating to the school's history and an ancient Roman coin contributed by Arthur W. Westhorpe, editor of the Press and Dakotan.

Construction then proceeded rapidly on the building which was planned to accommodate 100 women and was financed by a bond issue. Built of brick with a roof of Spanish tile, the new dormitory was designed to be as near fireproof as possible. A public reception was held in November of 1915, and Yankton author Joseph Mills Hanson wrote a dedicatory poem to be read each succeeding year when the annual housewarming fire is lighted in the fireplace contributed by the Class of 1914. The total cost for the building with furnishings was reported as $90,545.42, somewhat in excess of the original estimates and far more than the insurance settlement for Dakin Hall.

The new dormitory -- Kingsbury Hall for Women -- was named for Dr. Alice Reynolds Kingsbury, daughter of the pioneer Congregational minister, Rev. Lucius Kingsbury. Born at Springfield, Ill., on Nov. 20, 1867, she had come to Dakota Territory with her parents, and upon her graduation from Yankton College in 1890 was reputedly the first woman to complete a full college course in the two Dakotas.