Eleutherian College

Eleutherian College, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1997, was founded as Eleutherian Institute in 1848 by a group of local anti-slavery Baptists at Lancaster in Jefferson County. The institute's name comes from the Greek word eleutheros, meaning "freedom and equality." The school admitted students without regard to ethnicity or gender, including freed and fugitive slaves. Its first classes began offering secondary school instruction on November 27, 1848. The school was renamed Eleutherian College in 1854, when it began offering college-level coursework. It is the second college in the United States west of the Allegheny Mountains and the first in Indiana to provide interracial education. The restored three-story stone chapel and classroom building was constructed between 1853 and 1856 and presently serves as a local history museum.

In the decade before the American Civil War, African-American students comprised approximately one quarter to one third of the institute's total enrollment, with its peak years between 1855 and 1861. At one time during this period its enrollment reached 150 students; however, attendance soon declined and no black students were enrolled at the school after 1861. During the Civil War the college's grounds were used for military training and its main building were used for meetings and concerts. The college closed in 1874, but the main building was used as a private high school and teachers' training school until 1887, when the Lancaster township trustees purchased the building for use as a public school, which closed in 1938. Historic Madison, a Jefferson County preservation organization, received the school as a gift in 1973 and sold it to its present owners in 1990. The new owners formed Historic Eleutherian College Inc., a non-profit group, in 1996. The main building has been restored to reflect an 1850s-era appearance.

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