Founding
The predecessor to the University of Nashville, Davidson Academy, was founded as a preparatory school for boys in Nashville, Tennessee in 1789. In 1802 this institution moved to a building in downtown Nashville. The facility, named Cumberland Hall, was located at 300 Peabody St., on the corner of what is now Peabody St. and Third Avenue. The building no longer stands, but a Tennessee State Historical Marker was erected on the site.
In 1806, Davidson Academy changed its name to Cumberland College. United States President Andrew Jackson served on the board of trustees for many years during this time.
When Reverend Phillip Lindsley was named the chancellor of Cumberland College in 1824, he announced plans to create a grand university. In 1826, the Tennessee State Legislature changed the charter of Cumberland College to the University of Nashville. In 1827, future Confederate General Gideon Pillow was part of a graduating class of twelve.
Under Reverend Phillip Lindsley, the University of Nashville provided educational instruction to young men. The quality of the school's instruction caused the city of Nashville to be referred to as the Athens of the South during this period. Because of its high quality universities, the city continues under that nickname. Though by today's standards, the University of Nashville was more of a preparatory school than a college, it was considered one of the leading universities of the day.
Lindsley, along with George Ticknor at Harvard, Jacob Abbott at Amherst, and James Marsh at the University of Vermont, was considered one of the leading educational reformers of the area. He sought to introduce a European level of instructional excellence, and used the German education as opposed to the English model of instruction.
In 1838, the University of Nashville had 188 students.
In 1850, all parts of the college level instruction were shut down, a consequence of a cholera epidemic in the city and the demolition of its campus building, Cumberland Hall. That same year, however, the University of Nashville opened a medical college.
Though the regular college program did not operate for a four-year period from the fall of 1850 to the fall of 1854, the medical department of the university flourished. It grew from 150 students to 9000 students very quickly.
Read more about this topic: University Of Nashville
Famous quotes containing the word founding:
“The responsible business men of this country put their shoulders to the wheel. It is in response to this universal demand that we are founding today, All-American Airways.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“... there is no way of measuring the damage to a society when a whole texture of humanity is kept from realizing its own power, when the woman architect who might have reinvented our cities sits barely literate in a semilegal sweatshop on the Texas- Mexican border, when women who should be founding colleges must work their entire lives as domestics ...”
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“The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)