Florence Wesleyan University

Florence Wesleyan University

Education

Florence Wesleyan University began when LaGrange College's students and teachers sought a new location in Florence. The majority of the faculty and students left the original site of LaGrange College - across the river from Florence (4 miles south of Leighton, Alabama) in 1855. The college began holding classes at the Florence Masonic hall because construction on their building, Wesleyan Hall, had not been completed yet. The tuition was listed as $25 for a ten month semester. The college closed from 1861-1869 due to the fact that over 100 students and faculty left to fight in the Civil War. After the Civil War had ended the school reopened but closed three years later due to lack of funding. In 1872 the school was deeded to the state of Alabama and reopened as State Normal School.

Claire Eagle, University of North Alabama

William Lindsey McDonald, A Walk Through The Past: People and Places of Florence and Lauderdale County, Alabama. (Bluewater Publications, 2003), 90-91.

University of North Alabama, "Brief Look at University of North Alabama History." Florence, Alabama, 2005.

Alabama Cultural Resource Survey