History
The University of Florida traces its origins to 1853, when the East Florida Seminary, the oldest of the University of Florida's four predecessor institutions, was founded in Ocala, Florida.
On January 6, 1853, Florida Governor Thomas Brown signed a bill that provided public support for higher education in the state of Florida. Gilbert Kingsbury was the first person to take advantage of the legislation, and established the East Florida Seminary. The East Florida Seminary was the first state-supported institution of higher learning in Florida. James Henry Roper, an educator from North Carolina and a state senator from Alachua County, built a school, the Gainesville Academy, around the same time. In 1866, after East Florida Seminary had closed during the American Civil War, Roper offered his land and school to the State of Florida in exchange for the relocation of East Florida Seminary to Gainesville.
The second major precursor to the University of Florida was the Florida Agricultural College, established at Lake City by Jordan Probst in 1884. Florida Agricultural College became the state's first land-grant college under the Morrill Act. In 1903, the Florida Legislature, desiring to expand the school's outlook and curriculum beyond its agricultural and engineering origins, changed the name of Florida Agricultural College to the "University of Florida," a name that the school would hold for only two years.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)