for the school was appointed.  They selected for the location Hensonville, Chester County, Pennsylvania.[1] The legislature incorporated the institution in 1854 with John M. Dickey, Alfred Hamilton, Robert P. DuBois, James Latta, John B. Spottswood, James Crowell, Samuel J. Dickey, Alfred Hamilton, John M. Kelton, and William Wilson as trustees.  Sufficient buildings and equipment having been provided by 1856, the doors of this institution were opened to young colored men seeking preparation for work in this country and Liberia.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Baird, A Collection, etc., p. 819.]

[Footnote 2:  Special Report of the United States Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 382.]

An equally successful plan of workers in the West resulted in the founding of the first higher institution to be controlled by Negroes.  Having for some years believed that the colored people needed a college for the preparation of teachers and preachers, the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in session in 1855 appointed Rev. John F. Wright as general agent to execute this design.  Addressing themselves immediately to this task Rev. Mr. Wright and his associates solicited from philanthropic persons by 1856 the amount of $13,000.  The agents then made the purchase payment on the beautiful site of Tawawa Springs, long known as the healthy summer resort near Xenia, Ohio.[1] That same year the institution was incorporated as Wilberforce University.  From 1856 to 1862 the school had a fair student body, consisting of the mulatto children of southern slaveholders.[2] When these were kept away, however, by the operations of the Civil War, the institution declined so rapidly that it had to be closed for a season.  Thereafter the trustees appealed again to the African Methodist Episcopal Church which in 1856 had declined the invitation to cooeperate with the founders.  The colored Methodists had adhered to their decision to operate Union Seminary, a manual labor school, which they had started near Columbus, Ohio.[3] The proposition was accepted, however, in 1862.  For the amount of the debt of $10,000 which the institution had incurred while passing through the crisis, Rev. Daniel A. Payne and his associates secured the transfer of the property to the African Methodist Episcopal Church.  These new directors hoped to develop a first-class university, offering courses in law, medicine, literature, and theology.  The debt being speedily removed the school showed evidences of new vigor, but was checked in its progress by an incendiary, who burned the main building while the teachers and pupils were attending an emancipation celebration at Xenia, April 14, 1865.  With the amount of insurance received and donations from friends, the trustees were able to construct a more commodious building which still marks the site of these early labors.[4]

[Footnote 1:  The Non-Slaveholder, vol. ii., p. 113.]

[Footnote 2:  Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., 1871, pp. 372-373.]