1817 - First meeting of board of trustees. College seal approved.
1821 - First baccalaureate degrees awarded. Number of students receiving degrees: four.
1840 - Allegheny offers bachelor of science degree for first time.
1848 - First official faculty meeting. The president and all four members of the faculty are present.
1855 - First fraternity (Phi Kappa Psi) chartered.
1861 - Students rush to enlist on the side of the Union in the Civil War.
1867 - First recorded game between an Allegheny baseball team and an outside opponent, the Mutuals of Meadville.
1870 - Adelle Williams becomes the first woman student to enroll.
1873 - M. Ella D. Nash is the first woman to graduate.
1874 - First general alumni reunion.
1880 - First performance of the Allegheny College orchestra. First yearbook published.
1888 - William C. Jason becomes the first known African American student to receive an Allegheny degree. He went on to serve as president of Delaware State College.
1899 - First extramural women's basketball game.
1901 - Cornerstone laid for Ford Memorial Chapel.
1910 - Dedication of Civil War monument. First Rustic Bridge formally opened.
1912 - President William Howard Taft speaks at Allegheny, the only visit to the campus by a sitting U.S. president.
1918 - Allegheny Division of the U.S. Army demobilized.
1923 - First Homecoming celebration.
1926 - First drama performance in which men and women appear in the same cast.
1936 - In the midst of the Great Depression, students print the first April's Fool issue of the Campus.
1942 - First war-related blackout on Allegheny campus.
1950 - Classes called off because of the "Big Snow."
1970 - Student strike committee formed in protest of U.S. policy in Vietnam and the May 4 shootings at Kent State University.
1977 - Bentley Hall placed on National Register of Historic Places.
1983 - Allegheny celebrates 150 years of association with the Methodist Church.
1990 - Allegheny wins Division III national football championship. Trustees vote to divest stocks of companies doing business in South Africa.
1993 - First Coming Out Day in support of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Students.
2002 - Vietnam War Memorial dedicated.
There would be no new history of Allegheny without Jonathan Helmreich, College historian and professor emeritus of history. He agreed to do the book without compensation and spent years researching and writing it.
It was a task not taken lightly. "There is a cloud of witnesses hovering over my shoulder saying, 'Get it right. Let them know how much we cared, how hard we tried,'" Helmreich says.
Three alumni had pivotal roles in bringing out this lavishly illustrated book: designer Jed Miller '69, photographer Bill Owen '74, and copy editor Abby Collier '03.
As he researched Through All the Years, Helmreich came to know Allegheny in ways that perhaps no one else has. "I found how advanced the college was for its times in the 1820's and 1830's and from 1900 to 1920," he says. "And I saw what a seminal and life-changing experience attending the college was for many persons in the 19th century...
"And I learned how much is owed to an unsung group of people. Not faculty, alumni, trustees, administration, but rather the loyal staff of secretaries, grounds keepers, janitors, cooks, who came to love the students and institution and serve at a level of effort and loyalty far above what would have been commensurate with their pay."
