Emory University - History

History

In 1836, a small group of Methodists from Newton County contemplated the establishment of a new town and college. The town was named Oxford after the school's prestigious British namesake, which graduated the two founders of Methodism, John and Charles Wesley. The college was named after John Emory, an American Methodist bishop who inspired them.

Events preceding the chartering of Emory College began in 1783, when the Georgia State Legislature provided for the founding of "a college or seminary of learning." However, general support of education in Georgia was meager until the 1830s, when an educational fad in Germany inspired Georgia Methodists to create a school for manual labor. At the Georgia Methodist Conference in 1834, a preacher known as "Uncle Allen" Turner suggested that Georgia Methodists should develop their own school rather than support Randolph-Macon in Virginia. As a result, the Manual Labor School was created in Covington, Georgia in 1835.

On December 10, 1836, the Georgia General Assembly granted the Georgia Methodist Conference a charter to Emory College, named for John Emory, a popular bishop who had presided at the 1834 conference but had died in a carriage accident in 1835. Two years after the chartering, the college opened its doors, and on September 17, 1838, the college's first president, Ignatius Alphonso Few, and three faculty members welcomed fifteen freshmen and sophomores.

Emory College imposed a strict environment during most of the 19th century. By signing their names into the Matriculation Book, students were bound to obey the "Laws and Statutes of the College," which bound students to their rooms during study hours, and forbade them from leaving the town limits without the president's consent and engaging in immoral activities. Until the presidency of Warren Candler in the 1890s, Emory prohibited intercollegiate sports. He thought the practice "evil, only evil, and that continually," his principal objection being the cost of intercollegiate athletic programs, the temptation of gambling, and the distraction from academics. However, he was not unalterably opposed to athletics, and during his presidency he raised funds for the first gymnasium at Emory and oversaw the creation of the nation's first model intramural program.

Emory College was closed briefly during the Civil War. In the autumn of 1861, every student left to fight, and the college's trustees closed for the duration. During the war, the college's buildings saw duty both as a Confederate hospital and Union headquarters. When Emory reopened in January 1866, the school's library was destroyed and its small endowment was depleted. Only with the aid of a state grant could students afford to resume their education.

In the years following the Civil War, Emory, along with the rest of the South, struggled to overcome financial devastation. The first step toward financial stability came in 1880, when Emory President Atticus G. Haygood preached a Thanksgiving Day sermon expressing gratitude for the end of slavery, which captured the attention of George I. Seney, a Brooklyn banker and Methodist. Seney gave Emory College $5,000 to repay its debts, $50,000 for construction, and $75,000 to establish a new endowment. Over the years, Seney invested more than a quarter-million dollars into Emory College, helping to erect the administration building in Oxford that bears his name.

Under President Haygood's direction, Emory College began to offer many technical and professional subjects in addition to courses required for degrees. By the turn of the 21st century, Emory had evolved its traditional liberal arts program into a broad curriculum encouraging students to pursue degrees in science, study in theology and law, and even learning and expertise in technology and tool craft. The technology department was launched by President Isaac Stiles Hopkins, a polymath professor at Emory College, who was later convinced by state legislators to become the first president of what is now the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The course of Emory's history changed dramatically when, in November 1979, Robert and George Woodruff presented the institution with a gift of $105 million in Coca-Cola stock. At the time this was the largest single gift to any institution of higher education in American history, and it made a profound impact on Emory's direction in the next two decades, boosting the university to the top ranks of American research universities.

Emory celebrated its 175th anniversary in 2011.