”HOWARD COLLEGE. Baptist male college to which women are admitted, founded in 1833, on a farm near Greensboro, Hale County, afterwards refounded in 1841 at Marion, Perry County, and removed in 1887, to East Lake, Birmingham. The College was first opened in 1833 as a manual labor institution as a result of the feeling of the Baptists that they needed an institution for the training of indigent young men who felt called to the ministry. The school was opened on a tract of land, consisting of 355 acres, which had been purchased from Mr. James Hutchens. The report of the Board of trustees made in 1835 shows that one professor of theology had been appointed and that six dormitories, buildings of one story in height and containing two rooms each, together with a comfortable professor’s home, and dining hall, had been constructed. …

Driven by sheer necessity to establish a school to meet the demands of the denomination, Howard College was organized in 1842. The Baptist convention, at its regular annual meeting in Talladega, in November, 1841, accepted the report of its committee on education, which recommended the establishment and endowment of a college or university of high character,’and that in connection with the said college or university a theological department should be maintained.’

On December 29, 1841, the college was chartered with the following trustees: …Robert J. Ware”

Reference Data:

History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography, Vol. 1, by Thomas McAdory Owen and Marie Bankhead Owen, 1921, page 711