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Brevard College was established as a result of the merger of Rutherford College and Weaver College. The Western North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church voted for the merger in 1933. The school opened its doors in the fall of 1934. Eugene Jarvis Coltrane was the school’s first president, serving until 1950.
Rutherford College in Burke County had been established as a private school in 1853 by Robert Laban Abernethy. It received Methodist support beginning in 1900. Weaver College in Buncombe County also began in 1853 even though it was not chartered as a four-school until 1873. In 1912 it became a junior college.
In the early 1930s both schools experienced financial difficulties and the Methodist conference voted that they should be merged. Brevard Institute, founded in 1895 by the Reverend and Mrs. Fitch Taylor and sitting idle since the opening of pubic schools, was selected as the site for the new schools. The college remained a two-year institution until 1995 when it adopted it present four-year curriculum.
References:
William S. Powell, Higher Education in North Carolina (1970)
Brevard College website: http://www.brevard.edu
Asheville Citizen, October 27, 1953, and March 19, 1961
Greensboro Daily News, June 30, 1963
(Raleigh) News and Observer, July 20, 1933
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