1833

In 1833 the Georgia Methodist Conference first contemplated the establishment of a church-sponsored manual labor school, where students would combine farm work with a college preparatory curriculum. In doing so, they planted the seed that became Emory College and then Emory University.

1835

1837

The organization of Emory College began. At its first meeting the Board of Trustees accepted land belonging to the Manual Labor School on which to situate the "contemplated college" and the proposed new town they would call Oxford.

The first literary society, Phi Gamma (for which Phi Gamma Hall was named), may have been founded even before classes began in September. It was certainly founded by 1839, when a rival organization, the Few Society, originated.

Ignatius Alphonso Few, a Princeton-educated lawyer, a planter, and a skeptic-turned-Methodist, was elected the first president of Emory College.

The first faculty members appointed by the trustees were: Alexander Means, George W. Lane, Archelaus Mitchell, and George H. Round, all of whom were Methodist preachers.

1844

In one of the bitter disputes between North and South that eventually erupted into civil war, the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church focused on Bishop James O. Andrew, president of Emory's Board of Trustees and a resident of Oxford, who had inherited two slaves and could not free them under Georgia law. After delegates voted to suspend Andrew, the church split along sectional lines and Oxford became the intellectual center of Methodism in the Southeast.

1852

Work began at Oxford on a much-needed main building, which would provide space for a library, science demonstrations, classes, and an auditorium.

1855

James R. Thomas, a graduate of Randolph-Macon College, a former president of Collinsworth Institute in Georgia, and a former professor at Wesleyan Female College, became the fifth president of Emory College.

1857

President Thomas banned fraternities at Emory because rivalries between them had reached, he said, "a pitch of bloody desperation" and late-night meetings had encouraged students to engage in "vicious revel."

1866

Emory reopened in January with twenty students and three professors, one of whom was President Thomas. Passage of Georgia's bill to finance the education of indigent and maimed soldiers brought many veterans to the campus as students during the following year.

1867

In response to the need for "practical" education, Emory added to its standard four-year curriculum emphasizing the classics a three-year program that did not require Greek or Latin.

Luther M. Smith, an Emory College-educated lawyer and professor of Greek, became the sixth president of Emory College.

1870

Sunrise prayers, previously mandatory for students, were discontinued.

1871

Osborn L. Smith, an Emory-educated teacher of languages, a former president of Wesleyan College, a former member of the Georgia legislature, and a Methodist minister, became the seventh president of Emory College.

The main building at Oxford, virtually destroyed during the war, was condemned, and Bishop George F. Pierce, who had been president of Emory College when the structure was erected, launched a major drive to raise funds for new buildings.

1881

The master of arts degree became an earned degree requiring a thesis. Until this time, it was "conferred on every Bachelor of Arts of three years standing or more who [had] been engaged since his graduation in some literary occupation and [had] attained a good moral character."

1882

Under President Haygood's direction, Emory College began to offer many technical and professional subjects in addition to courses required for degrees. The classes were designed to produce citizens who would be skilled workers as well as educated men.

1884

At the College's first intercollegiate debate of record, Emory students and students from Mercer University in Macon argued the question of women's suffrage. Emory students presented the affirmative position and lost.

Isaac Stiles Hopkins, a graduate of Emory, a Georgia Medical College-educated physician, and a Methodist minister, became the ninth president of Emory College.

1834

At a meeting of the Georgia Methodist Conference, a preacher known as "Uncle" Allen Turner declared that Georgia Methodists should have their own college instead of supporting Randolph-Macon in Virginia.

On December 18, the General Assembly of Georgia chartered the Georgia Methodists Conference Manual Labor School.

1836

On December 10, the Georgia General Assembly granted the Georgia Methodist Conference, represented by Ignatius Few, a charter to establish a college to be named for John Emory, a popular bishop who had presided at the 1834 conference but had been killed in 1835 in a carriage accident.

1838

Emory College classes began on September 17 for fifteen students.

1840

Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, a Yale-educated lawyer, a planter, an editor, a judge, and the author of Georgia Scenes, became the second president of Emory College.

In July the Emory College Board of Trustees took over all the assets and liabilities of the financially shaky Manual Labor School.

Emory became the home of a "Temple" of the Mystic Seven, reputedly the first chapter of a national fraternity to be established in the South.

1841

Emory College's first graduates -- Henry Bass, Adam C. Potter, and Armistead R. Holcombe -- received their diplomas.

1845

L.Q.C. Lamar graduated from Emory College. He later served in the U.S. House of Representatives, as a U.S. senator, as Secretary of the Interior, and as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1848

Joseph S. Key graduated. Thirty-eight years later he would become the first Emory alumnus to serve as a bishop of the Methodist Church.

1850

Emory students debated the question "Should Georgia secede from the Union?" By a vote of members of the literary societies, the negative won.

1854

Alexander Means, a largely self-educated physician and chemist and a Methodist minister, became the fourth president of Emory College.

The Atlanta Medical College was founded, becoming the first of several forerunners of Emory University's School of Medicine.

1859

All Emory College dormitories, branded "facilities for mischief," were closed.

1861

Alexander Means, a delegate to the January convention that passed Georgia's act of secession, first spoke in favor of delaying the act, but later voted for the Secession Ordinance in its final version.

In late April a Confederate flag was raised at Emory College, and volunteers for the Confederate Army were recruited.

In November Emory College closed its doors until, the trustees wrote, peace should "take the place of the present public agitation." During the war the unused college buildings would first be commandeered as a Confederate hospital and then occupied by Northern troops. Three Emory graduates would attain the rank of brigadier general: Edward L. Thomas, James P. Simms, and Reuben W. Carswell. Thirty-five Emory men would lose their lives in the service of the Confederate Army.

1869

The Board of Trustees lifted the ban on fraternities imposed twelve years earlier and gave official sanction to chapters of Chi Phi and Kappa Alpha.

1873

While Emory College was still struggling to overcome the financial devastation of the war, a nationwide economic panic resulted in a drop in enrollment and a corresponding drop in school income.

1875

Atticus Greene Haygood, an Emory-educated Methodist minister and a former editor of the Sunday School publications of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, became the eighth president of Emory College.

1880

The Emory Mirror, the first major student publication for which copies of successive issues are extant, was initially produced. In 1886 The Mirror and a shorter-lived rival called The Georgia College Journal merged to form a new paper called The Emory Phoenix.

President Haygood preached a Thanksgiving Day sermon entitled "The New South," in which he urged Southerners to put provincialism and illiteracy behind them and to cultivate the growth of industry. The printed sermon later fell into the hands of George I. Seney, a New York banker and Methodist layman, who responded by giving $130,000 to Emory College. Part of the money was used to finance the construction of Seney Hall.