A comprehensive regional university today, the University of North Alabama traces its beginnings to the first half of the 19th century, when the Methodist Episcopal Church sought to bring learning and culture to an obscure mountain in Alabama.

LaGrange College

The University of North Alabama was preceded by LaGrange College which opened January 11, 1830, in a mountain hamlet a few miles south of Leighton in eastern Colbert County, Alabama. LaGrange means "The Barn" in French. Twenty-one local college trustees were listed in Acts of Alabama, Eleventh Annual Session.

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.

Robert Paine was the first president. The North Carolina native was also the professor of moral science and belles lettres 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. In 1830, Turner Saunders, a native of Virginia, was the first President of the Board of Trustees. Saunders' mansion c1826 still stands in Lawrence County. 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. Two of the founders the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee, brothers Frank O. McCord and Luther McCord, were also former LaGrange College students.

LaGrange College and Military Academy In 1858, following the death of the school's president and the loss of most of its students to nearby Florence, the college was suspended and re-established as the LaGrange College and Military Academy, with James W. Robertson as superintendent. Under its new name, additional buildings were constructed and the school reached its highest prosperity. The state of Alabama made provision for two cadets from each county to be enrolled, and by 1861 47 of its 171 students were state cadets. The school suffered a loss of enrollment again when Alabama seceded, and in March 1862 Robertson received approval from the Alabama governor to enroll the 35th Alabama Infantry from faculty, cadets, and enlistees from surrounding counties.

On April 28, 1863, the buildings were destroyed by Union soldiers of the 10th Missouri Cavalry, including a library of 4,000 volumes.

Today, a nine-ton stone monument marks the former location of the LaGrange community and college.

Florence Wesleyan University

LaGrange graduate 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.

Those who accompanied the school across the Tennessee River to Florence fully expected that the institutional name, LaGrange College, would be carried over as well. After the move, however, the Alabama Legislature passed a bill to reincorporate the institution under a new name, Florence Wesleyan University."Our Legislature". Sumter County Whig. February 6, 1856. p. 2. Governor John A. Winston vetoed the bill to incorporate under the new name,"House of Representatives". Jacksonville Republican. February 5, 1856. p. 2. but the Alabama Legislature voted to override his veto."Captions of Acts Passed at the Session of the Alabama Legislature of 1855-1856". The Autauga Citizen. February 28, 1856. p. 1.

+ 19th-century presidents and years President Years Robert Paine 1830–1846 Edward Wadsworth 1847–1852 James Ward Hardy 1852–1853 Smith W. Moore (acting) 1853 R. H. Rivers 1854–1861 Robert A. Young 1862–1865 Septimus P. Rice (acting) 1865–1868 William H. Anderson 1868–1871 Transition Period 1872–1873 Septimus P. Rice 1873–1881 Hardie A. Brown 1881–1885 James A. Heard 1885–1886 T. J. Mitchell 1886–1887 James Knox Powers 1887–1897

Admission to Florence Wesleyan required an acquaintance with English grammar, arithmetic, geography and the Latin and Greek Grammar. Prospective students also were required to demonstrate an ability to translate four books of Caesar's Gallic Wars, six books of Virgil's Aeneid, Jacob's or Felton's Greek Reader, and at least one of Xenophon's Anabasis.Smith, William E., "Leo's Tale: University of North Alabama Trivia, Florence, AL, Shoals Heritage Publishers, 2000.

One-hundred sixty 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. Among Florence Wesleyan's graduates were Alabama Governor Emmet 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). Ross also is the namesake of Sul Ross University in Alpine, Texas.

Though the bloody four-year conflict between North and South loomed, the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the Civil War are considered the best years of the institution during the 19th century. The fledgling university was entirely out of debt and even had amassed an endowment of $50,000. The faculty was considered first rate for the time and place.

The Civil War

The American Civil War bestowed much hardship on the institution. Following the firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, and President Lincoln's subsequent call for 75,000 troops, four professors and more than one hundred students left the school to take up arms.

During the war, Wesleyan Hall, the university's only building, was occupied by both Union and Confederate armies."UNA Public and Tourist Attractions," Office of University Relations, University of North Alabama

General William Tecumseh Sherman is considered the most famous Union occupant of Wesleyan Hall during the war. In late 1864, shortly before his ill-fated involvement in the battles of Franklin and Nashville, Confederate General John Bell Hood occupied the building. The surrounding grounds were occupied by his troops and served as a meeting place for military personnel and townspeople for parties, dances and concerts. Confederate Generals Pierre G.T. Beauregard and Stephen D. Lee also occupied the adjoining grounds during the war and also may have used Wesleyan Hall as their headquarters.

Robert A. Young, president of Florence Wesleyan at the time, is credited with saving the institution from destruction.

In addition to Lawrence "Sul" Ross, who also was a general in the Confederate States Army, LaGrange College and Florence Wesleyan University produced three other Civil War generals: Confederate Generals Edward A. O'Neal (later an Alabama governor) and John Gregg and Union General Daniel McCook, Jr.

Following the war, Septimus Rice was the University's sole instructor, teaching classes in the Preparatory School and holding college-level courses in Wesleyan Hall. Despite a prolonged effort by the new Wesleyan University president, William H. Anderson, the institution continued to founder, and in 1871, the doors of Wesleyan Hall were closed.

Recognizing the need for trained teachers in the post-war South, the Methodist Episcopal Church turned over Wesleyan Hall and the surrounding grounds to the state of Alabama, which then chartered it as a state normal school.

As a state school

State Normal School at Florence

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. Tuition to the State Normal School at Florence was free on the condition that students taught for two years at any Alabama public school after graduation."The State Normal School at Florence". The Livingston Journal. January 17, 1873. p. 4.

A year after its becoming a state school, the institution opened its doors to women,"State Normal School, Florence, Ala." Florence Times-Journal. February 18, 1874. p. 3. making it one of the first co-educational institutions in the nation. Yet no women attended the school until 1874, when 31 young women enrolled. The first woman joined the faculty in 1879.

Florence Normal School's Newton W. Bates, professor of language and literature, published his History of Civil Government of Alabama in 1892, the first textbook on the history of Alabama.

State Normal College In 1888, the school underwent a name change from State Normal School to State Normal College. That same year, James Knox Powers, a Florence native and Wesleyan University alumnus, became the fifth president.

At the beginning of Powers' tenure, the college's curriculum encompassed three courses of study: an elementary course to prepare aspiring teachers for primary and elementary education; an advanced course, involving an extra year's academic work in academic and professional subjects; and a professional course for high school graduates and "cultured" individuals who had no previous training in the teaching arts.

By 1897, when Powers left to assume the presidency of the University of Alabama and was replaced by Marshall Clark Wilson, the campus had changed little. Wesleyan Hall remained the only building owned by the college, and the campus still was confined to the original .

T.S. Stribling, one of the university's most noteworthy alumni, graduated from Florence State Normal School in 1903. He is recognized as one of the leaders of the Southern Renaissance for his novels Birthright, The Forge, The Store and the Unfinished Cathedral. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and author also outsold contemporaries William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway during the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s.

Florence State Teachers College + 20th- and 21st-century presidents Name Years Marshall C. Wilson 1897–1911 James Knox Powers 1911–1913 Robert Harrison (acting) 1913 Henry J. Willingham 1913–1938 James Albert Keller 1938–1948 F. E. Lund (acting) 1948 Ethelbert B. Norton 1948–1972 Robert M. Guillot 1972–1989 Robert L. Potts (acting) 1990 Robert L. Potts (permanent) 1990–2004 G. Garry Warren (acting) 2004–2005 William G. Cale, Jr. 2005–2014 John G. Thornell (interim) 2014–2015 Kenneth D. Kitts 2015–present

The institution functioned as a normal school for more than 50 years until 1929, when it became a state teachers college offering a four-year curriculum in elementary education.

The first bachelor's degrees were awarded in 1931. Less than a decade later, the curriculum was expanded to include a four-year course of study in secondary education. In 1947, the curriculum was expanded again to include A.B. and B.S. degree programs in fields other than teacher training.

Florence State College