The Town That Started The Civil War

Presbyterian Ministers John Jay Shipherd and Philo P Stewart founded on September 2nd 1833 Oberlin College a private liberal arts college in Oberlin Ohio. Motivated by Pastor John Frederick Oberlin, the college was set up to “train teachers and other Christian leaders for the boundless most desolate fields in the West." That December twenty-nine male and fifteen female students began classes. Two years latter in 1835 Oberlin was receiving students “irrespective of color." Oberlin College was the first school to graduate an African American woman; Mary Jane Petterson with a BA degree in 1862. Oberlin Ohio the town around the college was know as the “town that started the Civil War”. In 1858 the faculty and students of the school took part in the rescue of a fugitive slave, which got national news coverage as the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. A couple of students participated in John Brown’s raid on Harper's Ferry.