ABSTRACT
With the $100 that Clarissa Rogers had given him, John R. Commons "rented a shack of a house" at 24 Main Street in Oberlin, Ohio, and, in the fall of 1882, he started his college career. Clarissa, Clara, and Alvin came a year later. Alvin enrolled as a freshman and Clara as a high school student at the Oberlin preparatory academy. They came in the middle of what the historian John Barnard has called Oberlin's transformation from "Evangelicalism to Progressivism". This complicated environment would have an influence, but, for John R., struggles and work experience were almost as important as the school. As at Winchester and Union City, Clarissa held the little family together by providing most of the income—from two boarding houses. John R. was one of only eight students for whom Professor Monroe secured loans so that they could attend Johns Hopkins University.
