The minutes show that 23 ladies and 22 gentlemen enrolled in the first classes at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College on December 14, 1891. But one of the students in the first graduating class, Alfred Edwin Jarrell, disputes that record in a memoir, insisting that he was one of a dozen or so students that actually registered, all of whom were part of a larger group from Stillwater City Schools, led by their principal Edward Francis Clark.

The first student to sign the college's register was James H. Adams, (also pictured) who went first as a matter of alphabetical order. The Stillwater Congregational Church (pictured) offered a temporary location for the handful of teachers and their students to hold classes, which started with a series of preparatory classes to eventually determine who would qualify for college-level instruction.