Franklin & Marshall College is one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States. Our roots go back to Franklin College, founded in 1787 with a generous financial contribution from Benjamin Franklin.
The product of a pioneering collaboration between English- and German-speaking communities in the most ethnically diverse region of the new nation, the College was launched by leaders of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches with support from trustees that included four signers of the Declaration of Independence, three future governors of Pennsylvania, two members of the Constitutional Convention, and seven officers of the Revolutionary Army. Their goal was "to preserve our present republican system of government," and "to promote those improvements in the arts and sciences which alone render nations respectable, great and happy."
Classes began on July 16, 1787, with instruction in both English and German, making Franklin College the first bilingual college in the country. It was also the first coeducational institution; its first class was made up of 78 men and 36 women. Among the first-year students was Richea Gratz, the first Jewish female college student in the United States.
However, the coed policy was soon abandoned. Coeducation was not revived at the College for another 182 years.
Marshall College, named after the great Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, was founded in 1836 in Mercersburg, Pa., under the sponsorship of the German Reformed Church. It attracted a distinguished faculty that became nationally known as leaders of an intellectual movement known as the Mercersburg Theology.
In 1853 Marshall College moved to Lancaster, Pa., and merged with Franklin College to form Franklin & Marshall College. James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States, was the first President of the Board of Trustees.
From the time of its centennial, the College complemented its strengths in the classics and philosophy with a widely respected program in science.
Then, in the 1920s, it added a program in business. The College's transformation continued after World War II with gradual expansion in size and academic scope. Increasingly, students and faculty were drawn from all regions of the nation and the world. Campus facilities expanded and the College became primarily residential.
Franklin & Marshall College became coeducational in 1969. The connection to the Reformed Church, later part of the United Church of Christ, was severed and the College became a secular institution. Throughout all of these changes, however, the College remained committed to "liberal learning."
Frederick Rauch, the first president of Marshall College, had proclaimed in 1837, "The fortune of our lives and our government depends not exclusively on useful knowledge but on our character as citizens, and to form this character by cultivating the whole [person] is the aim of education in the proper sense."
Today, with more than 2,300 students, Franklin & Marshall College proudly continues our dedication to intellectual freedom and critical learning as fundamental to a democratic society. As our mission statement affirms, this means that the College expects students to see connections, to discover community, and to understand the centrality of service to the human endeavor.
From the dramatic hills of Pittsburgh across rolling farmland and majestic forest to the narrow streets of colonial Philadelphia, Pennsylvania provides a wide range of experiences. The state reflects a rich history—from halcyon days as the seat of the American Revolution and a fledgling nation's first capital through its role as a leader in the country's transformation into an industrial powerhouse—and its role today as a leader in the health-care and pharmaceutical industries, a center for the arts, and a burgeoning tourist destination.
Pennsylvania has fascinating contrasts. A mostly rural state, it is home to two large cities: Philadelphia, the nation's fifth largest and the regional center for the eastern portion of the state; and Pittsburgh, the focus for the western portion. Within a few hours' drive of the worldliness and sophistication of these cities, you can return to a simpler way of life. The winding country lanes and now-silent battlefields conjure up images of the Civil War, while in Lancaster, the horse and buggy is still a viable means of transportation, as today's Pennsylvania Dutch hew to the traditions of their ancestors.
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