Eminence College
Eminence, Henry County, Kentucky
Marker Inscription
Eminence College Site. Chartered as a high school by Kentucky Legislature in 1856. The school had as trustees Dr. D. Porter, S.T. Drane, Morris Thomas, Preston Thomas, James Drane, W.B. Wilson, and W.J. Mason. In 1861, the name Eminence College conferred on it. Men and women were equally represented at one of state's first coeducational boarding schools. Presented by City of Eminence and Henry County Fiscal Court. (Reverse) Rev. W.S. Giltner (1827-1921) - President of Eminence College from 1858-1893, W.S. Giltner trained at Bethany College, W. Va. He and his wife, Lizzie Rains Giltner, led the college, creating a commercial dept. (1880) and normal school for training teachers (1886). Reverend Giltner also preached at Eminence Christian Church. Enrollment peaked around 200; college closed in 1895.
Erected by Kentucky Historical Society
The Story
Chartered by the Kentucky Legislature as a high school in 1856, this institution became Eminence College in 1861 and grew into one of the state's earliest coeducational boarding schools, where men and women were equally represented. Under the long presidency of Rev. W. S. Giltner from 1858 to 1893, it added a commercial department and a normal school for training teachers, with enrollment peaking near 200 before it closed in 1895.
Why it matters
Eminence College reflects the nineteenth-century movement to expand higher education — and, notably, to open it to women — in small-town America.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Rev. W. S. Giltner
- · Lizzie Rains Giltner
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Liberty Hall
Frankfort, KY
John Brown began this Georgian mansion in 1796, naming it for the Virginia academy he had attended, and its garden hosted what is remembered as the first Sunday School west of the Alleghenies, started by his wife Margaretta and Elizabeth Love. Brown (1757-1837) was a Revolutionary War veteran and aide to Lafayette who read law with Thomas Jefferson before becoming one of Kentucky's first two U.S. senators. Presidents James Monroe and Zachary Taylor, Andrew Jackson, and Lafayette himself were among the guests welcomed here.
First Presbyterian Church
Frankfort, KY
Frankfort's Presbyterians organized in 1815 and built the city's first denominational church in 1824, an outgrowth of a Sunday School that Margaretta Brown had begun in 1810. The present modified Gothic building went up in 1849 under the Rev. Stuart Robinson, and the congregation's strong Union sympathies kept it intact through the divisions of the Civil War.
Paul Sawyier Public Library
Frankfort, KY
Frankfort's public library owes its start to Lilian Lindsey, who founded it in 1908; it opened in the McClure Building and was run by the Frankfort Woman's Club until 1965, moving through several homes including the Old State House. In 1955 the Franklin County Homemakers Clubs launched a countywide bookmobile, which merged with the library a decade later. The combined institution was named the Paul Sawyier Public Library in honor of the well-known Kentucky artist, and a new building opened in 2006.
First Christian Church of Frankfort
Frankfort, KY
Founded in December 1832 by the noted minister-educator Philip S. Fall, this congregation belonged to the Restoration Movement whose champion, Alexander Campbell, preached from its pulpit. After fire destroyed the church in 1870, philanthropist Emily T. Tubman funded a new building, part of which survives in the sanctuary completed in 1924.