Louisburg College
College History
A Place That Started Before the Country Did
Franklin County was settled in 1779 and named for Benjamin Franklin. The town that followed took its name from Louis XVI, and its surveyors set aside a public commons on the highest ground — a grove of oaks that is, today, the Louisburg College campus.
The Franklin Male Academy was chartered in 1787, four years after the Revolutionary War ended and two years before George Washington took office. It re-chartered in 1802 and opened its doors on January 1, 1805, under Matthew Dickinson, a Yale graduate fluent in five languages.
In 1814, the Louisburg Female Academy was chartered on the west side of the commons. It opened the following August with twenty-three students under Harriet Partridge, one of the country's earliest institutions of higher education for women. By the 1850s, under Asher and Jane Curtis Ray, it had become a respected seminary teaching chemistry, geology, logic, Greek, and calisthenics, and its reputation drove the founding of Louisburg Female College in 1855.
The four-story Greek Revival building raised for that college in 1857 still stands. Old Main houses the College's administration today and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978. Washington Duke acquired the property in 1891 for $5,450. After his death, his son Benjamin gave it to the North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Church in 1907, and the institution became Louisburg College. It earned junior college standing in 1914, went coeducational in 1931, and was accredited by the Southern Association in 1952.
The most telling moment came in 1956. The Conference moved to establish two new senior colleges, and Louisburg's future as a two-year institution was genuinely in question. Alumni and Franklin County residents campaigned to keep it exactly what it was. They won. That decision is why Louisburg is the nation's oldest chartered two-year, church-related, coeducational college, and the only private two-year college still operating in North Carolina. Not because it never had the chance to become something else, but because the people who knew it best decided it was already what it needed to be.
239 Years of Opening Doors
Chartered in 1787 and opened January 1, 1805 under Yale graduate Matthew Dickinson. The two-story academy building still stands and now houses the Tar River Center for History and Culture.
Ratified December 27, 1814. Later renamed Louisburg Female Seminary; its reputation contributed to a movement to establish a female college.
Began January 1855. The 1857 four-story Greek revival building, now called Old Main, is still in use today as the administrative building.
In 1891 the Duke family purchased the college, renaming it Louisburg College, and donated it to the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church in 1907. Became co-educational in 1931 and earned Southern Association accreditation in 1952.
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