A group of visitors gathered in Morrill Hall on Sunday to learn more about the history of the piece of legislation that enabled the creation of land-grant universities such as Iowa State.

The Morrill Act will remain on display in Morrill Hall until April 27.

“Some people are confused about how the act and our university came together,” said Jerome Thompson, state curator for the State Historical Society. “In my opinion, the Morrill Act is the second most important piece of legislation concerning education in Congress.”

Thompson spoke briefly about the history of the act, then led the group into the Christian Petersen Art Museum, where the exhibit is located. On display in the exhibit is the act itself, portraits and quotes from key people in its development and photos and artifacts from Iowa State’s early years.

“There are around 100 land-grant universities in the nation,” Thompson said. “Take all of their graduates and the contributions they have made, and then ask, ‘Where would this state or the nation, or even the world, be without their ideas?'”

The Morrill Act, passed in 1862, was drafted by Abraham Lincoln to help establish schools across the country whose purpose was to help educate people in lower social and economic classes. The act did this by creating schools that focused in “such branches of learning as related to agriculture and the mechanical arts.”

Iowa was the first state to accept the terms of the act and received more than 200,000 acres of land to use for the school. The act also indirectly helped start the rivalry between Iowa and Iowa State.

“The University of Iowa, at first, wanted the land-grant school to be an extension of their university, but that was denied,” Thompson said. “There were also attempts to get a portion of the land sale funds that would be used to help fund Iowa State, which were unsuccessful.”

The act also influenced many other schools.

“In Pennsylvania, the act started an agricultural high school, which became Penn State,” Thompson said.

Katherine Kelly, an associate for Parks Library, knew about the exhibit from her job.

“I wanted to have a little more context about what a land-grant university was,” she said.

This is only the second time the Morrill Act has been let outside of the National Archives in Washington, D.C.