The story
Founding
Maryville College was founded as the "Southern and Western Theological Seminary" in 1819 by Isaac L. Anderson, a Presbyterian minister. Anderson had founded a school, Union Academy, in nearby Knox County, before becoming minister at New Providence Presbyterian Church in Maryville. He expressed to his fellow clergy the need for more ministers in the community, including a request to the Home Missionary Society and an appeal to divinity students at Princeton University in 1819. The new seminary was intended to help fill this need for ministers. It opened with a class of five men, and the new school was adopted by the Synod of Tennessee and formally named the Southern and Western Theological Seminary in October 1819.
After receiving its charter from the Tennessee General Assembly in 1842, the school adopted its current name, "Maryville College".
Integration
In 2004, Maryville College was recognized by the Race Relations Center of East Tennessee for its history of "contributing to improving the quality of life for all in East Tennessee". Maryville College was racially integrated from its earliest days. An ex-slave named George Erskine studied there in 1819, sponsored by the Manumission Society of Tennessee. Erskine went on to preach during the 1820s and was formally ordained by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1829.
Maryville College was closed during the Civil War, but, upon reopening, it again admitted students regardless of race, assisted by the Freedmen's Bureau.
When the State of Tennessee forced Maryville College to segregate in 1901, the college gave $25,000—a little more than a tenth of its endowment at the time—to Swift Memorial Institute, the college's sister school. Swift was founded by William Henderson Franklin, the first African American to graduate from Maryville College (1880). His institute educated black students during the era of imposed segregation.
After the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, Maryville College immediately re-enrolled African Americans.
In 1875, Maryville College conferred the first college degree to a woman in the state of Tennessee. The recipient was Mary T. Wilson, the older sister of Samuel T. Wilson, who later served as president of the college from 1901 until 1930.
From Wikipedia’s article on Maryville College, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5