After Oklahoma was admitted to statehood in 1907, the new state legislature was tasked with establishing institutions of higher education in the former Indian Territory.[6] Statistics gathered by the State Superintendent of Education showed that many young women from Oklahoma chose to attend women's colleges in Kansas, Texas, and Missouri.[7] Colonel J. T. O'Neil, the state senator from Grady County, and his daughter, Anne Wade O'Neil, who had graduated from a women's college in Mississippi, appealed to the legislature to authorize the creation of a women's college.[7] The University was founded on May 16, 1908, with the signing of Senate Bill 249 by Governor Charles Haskell.