Eliza Jane McKissack ( Eliza Jones Aykroyd 11 December 1828, in New Bern, North Carolina – 15 January 1900, in Nashville, Tennessee) was a music teacher who, in 1890, became the founding head of music at the University of North Texas College of Music, then called Normal Conservatory of Music, part of Texas Normal College and Teacher Training Institute, which was founded in 1890 as a private institution. The College of Music, today, is a comprehensive school with the largest enrollment of any institution accredited by the National Association of Schools of Music. It is the oldest (and first) in the world offering a degree in jazz studies. Since the 1940s, the College of Music has been among the largest in the country. McKissack's qualifications McKissack, from Nashville, was highly recommended for the college position – as pianist and vocalist – by Bishop Charles Quintard of Tennessee, U.S. Senator Edward C. Walthall of Grenada, Mississippi, and Orville Brewer of Chicago. She had received her musical training in Boston and New York. McKissack remained at the college for two academic years: 1890–1891 and 1891–1892. Three years after leaving Denton, records show that McKissack studied at the New England Conservatory in the academic year 1895–1896. While there, she studied piano with Reinhold Faelten (1856–1949) and took courses in Hand Culture and Sight Playing. At that time, her permanent address was listed as Oxford, Mississippi. Her Will (probated in Davidson County, Tennessee), provides two address: 1897 – Boscobel College, Nashville; January 1899 – Oxford, Mississippi. Texas Normal College Conservatory of Music Classes at Texas Normal College first commenced Tuesday, September 16, 1890. Teachers at the Conservatory John Moore (1867–1948) taught an ambitious array of engineering classes, but also taught voice and harmony. Upon arriving at Texas Normal College in 1890, Moore held a B.S. from one college and a B.A. from Lebanon College (National Normal University, in existence from 1855 to 1917), Lebanon, Ohio, in engineering, mathematics, and surveying. He then studied at the Universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg from 1894 to 1895, and received a PhD from Yale in 1895. His dissertation, Studies of Fatigue, was published in studies from the Yale Psychological Laboratory. He then received a D.D. from Central College in Missouri. In May 1918, he became a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church South in Dallas. Joshua Crittenden Chilton (1852–1896), the college's founding president, taught music history and theory