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Weaverville College was chartered in 1873 to offer four years of college work. Prior to that time an academy, operated by the local Sons of Temperance beginning in 1851, stood on the site. Montreville Weaver contributed the land on which the first buildings were situated. Through gifts and purchases the campus grew to fifty-five acres. Initially the college was governed by a local board of trustees independent of any denomination. The school’s first president was Dr. James A. Regan. Only in 1883 was the property deeded to the Methodist Episcopal Church and the school placed under the supervision of the Western North Carolina Conference.
In 1912 the school was renamed Weaver College and the change made from four-year to junior college status. Preparatory classes continued to be offered. The college from the outset was coeducational. Student activities revolved around literary societies and the sports programs. Graduates of Weaver include North Carolina Chief Justice Walter H. Stacy, Congressman Zeb Weaver, and University of North Carolina Professor Hugh T. Lefler.
The Western North Carolina Conference decided in 1933 to merge Weaver College and Rutherford College to create a single coeducational Methodist junior college on the grounds of the old Brevard Institute. In the fall of 1934 thirty Weaver students and five faculty members moved to Brevard College. Today Brevard continues to preserve the earlier institutions through the Weaver Room of the library and plans for a Weaver College Bell Tower. In Weaverville three structures remain from the original campus, the 1874 Administration Building, now used as a Masonic Temple, and two dormitories.
References:
Nell Pickens, Dry Ridge: Some of Its History, Some of Its People (1962)
William S. Powell, Higher Education in North Carolina (1963)
Douglas Swaim, ed., Cabins & Castles: The History & Architecture of Buncombe County, North Carolina (1981)
F. A. Sondley, A History of Buncombe County, North Carolina (1930)
Private Laws of North Carolina, 1873-1874, Chapter VIII
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