We begin before the beginning, so to speak. For Greenville College’s history is inescapably tied to that of its forerunner, Almira College.

John Brown White, the first president of Almira College, served from 1855 to 1878 (except for a three-year period when he stepped down during the Civil War for reasons related to that conflict). As the first president, he faced the tasks of founder and nourisher. What would be the purpose – the mission – and what would be the character of the college White would establish, with the help of his classmate at Brown University, Stephen Morse, and Morse’s wife, Almira?

These three people had drunk deeply of the reform spirit at work in mid-nineteenth century America. Their commitment to the God of Christ, to the Christian view of persons and life, and to the democratic ideals of the new nation, fired their motivation to found a Christian liberal arts college for women. It was indeed a strange idea for its time. How foreign it was to prevailing education dogma and to the common sense of the male dominated culture.

From Slaveholder to College President
These college founders’ consciences were also pricked by the immorality of the slave system. Black people, they believed, were God’s creation, fully human, and entitled to all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of any other citizen.

Ironically, White himself was a slaveholder before coming to Greenville. But while traveling from Memphis up the Mississippi River on his way to taking the helm at Almira College, White freed his slaves. Then as president of the fledgling institution in Bond County, where one could get hurt or even killed by opposing the Confederacy, White took his stand publicly in favor of Abraham Lincoln when Lincoln followed Douglas to speak in Greenville during the presidential campaign of 1860.

Based on these clear moral and educational commitments, and with Almira Morse providing the first $6,000, President White led the people of the region in supporting the new college for women. The year was 1855.

"A constant aim," White declared, "will be to make (the college) the center of all Christian influences, and a nursery of every good and noble enterprise. Teachers of generous impulses and elevated piety will be employed, who will make the Holy Scriptures the basis of government and religious instruction, and inculcate such obligations of love to God, and sympathy for all great Christian efforts, as to win the favor of good men, and receive the blessings of our Heavenly Father."

In that first year, just as White was undertaking to build the college to pursue its noble mission, his wife died suddenly. Her death left him to care for several small children while he traveled 4,700 miles raising money, hired a small faculty, recruited students, built a wood walk to traverse the three blocks from campus to town, taught several courses himself, contracted for wood with which to provide head, and negotiated for the making of 500,000 bricks on site, at 4.75 per thousand, to build "Old Main" (Hogue Hall)

The college prospered under White. The preparatory school and college drew young ladies of moderate means from the region of southwestern Illinois. Over the next several years the college was a vital part of the growth of Greenville and the region. But as was the case with so many nineteenth century colleges, Almira was always short of finances. It began early to accrue operating debt.

Year after year, Almira carried out its mission of education young women for leadership, both in the nation and in the home. By 1878 Almira’s preparatory school and collegiate department had served nearly two thousand students, a yearly average of 102.

The Wearying Task
In spite of its successes, Almira was part of, and subject to, the social and economic conditions of the day. As her debt grew year by eyar, as several liquidation-of-debt campaigns fell short, and as major donors passed from the scene, the day came in 1878 when Almira was sold to new owners. At that time James P. Slade, the state superintendent of public instruction, became the president of the college.

Slade, the second full-time president of Almira, 1878-91, faced the wearing and wearying task of saving the institution from going under due to its deepening debt. For fourteen years Slade operated the college and worked to put it on a sound economic base, while maintaining the Christian liberal arts mission. Young women, and soon young men, form the region were ably served. But the hound of inadequate finances which had pursued White also followed relentlessly after Slade.

Competition from public colleges, with their cheaper tuition, eventually proved to be the downfall of Almira. In 1890, with enrollment on the decline, and aging and tiring President Slade decided to rent the college’s lone building to Professor A. G. Smith to conduct whatever course he wanted. Meanwhile, Slade began to look for a buyer. He found one in 1891, sold the college for $12,000 and the new owners took over.

The Free Methodist Movement
While the Almira phase of the college in Greenville had ended, the basic building blocks of the school – the Christian mission, the liberal arts ideal, and the belief in education the poor and the previously bypassed group in the society and church – were still very much alive. Also, the Methodist movement in England was beginning to take hold among the working class and reform-minded middle class in Illinois. One form of this new religious movement was something called Free Methodism, which had spread west from New York.

The Free Methodist movement was rooted primarily among the poorer classes, and they chafed at the class structure which pew rental had come to symbolize in the Methodist Church at that time. The more affluent members could afford the best pews, and the poor took what was left.

The Free Methodists also opposed slavery, favored the ordination of women, and called for a disciplined life-style that excluded such vices as alcohol, tobacco, theatre, dancing, and billiards. Abstinence from these activities was evidence of holiness of heart, they believed.

Their leader, B.T. Roberts, believed deeply in the Christina liberal arts college. He was helped by a brilliant young scholar, Wilson T. Hogue, in found such a school in North Chili, New York, today known as Roberts Wesleyan College. Said Roberts of the moral imperative of maintaining both education and religion for a life of wholeness: "Education and religion should by no means be separated. . . Ignorance is the mother of superstition and religious error; and a system of education that does not comprehend the great truths of revelation fosters skepticism and infidelity in the youthful mind."

In stating this educational ideal, Roberts was simply continuing the emphases of John Wesley, an Oxford graduate and found of Methodism, the spiritual root of Free Methodism. When a critic charged that the Methodist movement was anti-reason, Wesley countered, "Sir, are you awake? Unless you are talking in your sleep, how can you utter so gross an untruth? It is a fundamental principle with us, that to renounce reason is to renounce religion; that religion and reason go hand in hand; that all irrational religion is false religion."

Wesley again affirmed the necessity of integrating education and religion in his Commentary on the Old Testament: "It is no part of my design to save either learned or unlearned men from thinking . . . On the contrary, my intention is to make them think, and assist them in thinking. This is the way to understand God: ‘Meditate theron day and night.’"