Tag: University of Nashville (Nashville TN)

Wikipedia says: University of Nashville was a private university in Nashville, Tennessee. It was established in 1826 as Cumberland College. It existed as a distinct entity until 1909; operating at various times a medical school, a four-year military college, a literary arts (liberal arts) college, and a boys preparatory school.

The predecessor to the University of Nashville, Davidson Academy, was founded as a preparatory school for boys in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1785. In 1802 this institution moved to a building in downtown Nashville. The facility, named Cumberland Hall, was located at 300 Peabody St., on the corner of what is now Peabody St. and Third Avenue. The building no longer stands, but a Tennessee State Historical Marker was erected on the site. In 1806, Davidson Academy changed its name to Cumberland College. United States President Andrew Jackson served on the board of trustees for many years during this time. Meanwhile, Reverend Philip Lindsley (1786–1855) was named the chancellor of Cumberland College in 1824.

In 1826, the Tennessee Legislature changed the name of Cumberland College to the University of Nashville. In 1827, future Confederate General Gideon Pillow was part of a graduating class of twelve. Under Reverend Phillip Lindsley, the University of Nashville provided educational instruction to young men, and Nashville became known as the ‘Athens of the South.’ In 1850, all parts of the college level instruction were shut down, a consequence of a cholera epidemic in the city. Meanwhile, Cumberland Hall was torn down, and the University of Nashville opened a medical college in 1851.

In 1853, a new building was constructed at 724 Second Avenue in Nashville, and in 1854, the college re-opened. In 1855, Lindsley’s son and successor John Berrien Lindsley merged the Western Military Institute and the University of Nashville. It moved its entire operation from Georgetown, Kentucky, where it had operated since its founding in 1847, to Nashville. Bushrod Johnson was a professor at the Western Military Institute from 1851 to 1855. He served as its headmaster when it moved to Nashville in the merger, and continued in that capacity until the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. He served the Confederate States Army during the war as a general. It was during this period that Sam Davis attended the Western Military Institute; he was later called the “boy hero of the Confederacy”, and hanged by Union forces as a spy in 1863. The Western Military Institute did not offer instruction from 1862 to 1865. During 1862, the campus building served as a Union hospital for Federal officers.