University of North Alabama
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The University of North Alabama (UNA) is a four-year public coeducational university located in Florence, Alabama.
History
The University of North Alabama first opened its doors as LaGrange College on January 11, 1830, in a mountain hamlet a few miles south of Leighton in northeast Franklin County, Alabama. LaGrange means "The Place" in French. Twenty-one local college trustees were listed in Acts of Alabama, Eleventh Annual Session (Tuscaloosa: McGuire, Henry and Walker, State Printers, 1830), pp. 41-43.
Today only a nine-ton stone monument silently guards the ghosts of the once bustling little town of LaGrange and its vibrant college, both of which were sacked and burned by Union troops in 1863. But by then, however, the college, as such, had moved north across the Tennessee River to Florence. The section of Franklin County containing LaGrange Mountain is now Colbert County. LaGrange College, which became Florence Wesleyan University in 1855, is now the University of North Alabama.
LaGrange College arose from the idea offered at a November 28, 1826 meeting of the Tennessee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church to establish a college which would not be “religious or theological. By January 1829, the selection of Lawrence Hill on LaGrange Mountain was made for the site of the school.
A year later, LaGrange College opened to students of all denominations in two three-story brick buildings. (This was slightly more than a year before the University of Alabama would open in Tuscaloosa.) Eight days after the opening of LaGrange College, the Alabama Legislature issued a charter for the institution, making it the first state-chartered institution to begin operation in Alabama. Other colleges were in operation, but not chartered by the state.
The Rev. Robert Paine was the first president. The North Carolina native was also the professor of moral science and belles letters and taught geography and mineralogy. He was assisted by two other professors. The first board of trustees had a total of 50 members, including two Native Americans, a Choctaw politician and a Cherokee leader. Among the many distant trustees was John Coffee of Florence, friend of Andrew Jackson. Among the local trustees was Henry Stuart Foote of Tuscumbia, who would move to Mississippi and defeat Jefferson Davis in the 1850 Governor's race. J.D. Malone, of Limestone County, was the first graduate in 1833.
In 1850, a grammar school was added to LaGrange College. (Today, UNA has the only university-owned and operated elementary laboratory school - Kilby Professional Laboratory School - in Alabama.)
Among LaGrange's alumni were several generals, Alabama governors Edward A. O'Neal and David P. Lewis, Alabama Supreme Court justice William M. Byrd and U.S. Senator Jeremiah Clemens, who wrote the first American Civil War novel and the first western novel.
LaGrange graduate Dr. R.H. Rivers, after becoming president of the college, led most of the students and all but one faculty member from the mountain in late 1854 to relocate to Florence. The school was re-incorporated as Florence Wesleyan University. One hundred and 60 students enrolled in the first year of operation (1855) of Florence Wesleyan University. The school quickly attracted students from five states and two foreign countries. The War Between the States bestowed much hardship on the institution. Among Florence Wesleyan’s graduates were Alabama governor Emmitt O'Neal and Texas governor Lawrence Sullivan “Sul” Ross (the latter of whose tenure as president of Texas A&M University was known as the 'golden age' of that institution).
When the Methodist Church deeded Florence Wesleyan to the State of Alabama in 1872, the institution became the State Normal School at Florence, the first state-supported teachers college south of the Ohio River. Shortly thereafter, it became one of the first co-educational institutions in the nation. A year after its becoming a state school, the institution opened its doors to women; however, none attended until 1874, when 31 young women enrolled. The first woman joined the faculty in 1879.
External link
- Primary Academic Information on University (http://www.una.edu/)