In 1842, the Virginia Institute was founded near Mt. Tabor Church, outside of Staunton, Virginia, by two Lutheran ministers, David F. Bittle and Christopher C. Baughman. After Bittle returned to the ministry in 1845, Baughman incorporated the school as Virginia Collegiate Institute. Two years later, he moved the school to Salem, seeking a larger population from which to recruit students. Baughman served as the principal of the school until 1853. That year, the Virginia Legislature granted the Institute a collegiate charter, as Roanoke College; David Bittle returned to accept the first presidency of the college.
When Roanoke College arrived in Salem, the entire college property fit upon a single wagon, and the school could only claim only six students who moved with the school from Mt. Tabor, and perhaps a couple of new local Salemites. A year later, and with a newly constructed building (the central part of the current Administration Building), enrollment had grown to 34. By the time of Bittle’s death, in 1876, the College had an enrollment of 171 students, taught by seven faculty members.
Roanoke College was one of a very few Southern colleges that remained open during the Civil War. A small corps of cadets was formed from the student body, and fought alongside Confederate forces in December of 1863. The students were quickly forced to surrender; the Union commander allowed them to return to the school with a promise to lay down arms. A college company was later officially listed in the Virginia Reserves in 1864, but never saw combat.
In the 1870s, third President Julius Dreher (himself a 1871 graduate of Roanoke College) started heavily pushing international recruitment. Several members of the Choctaw tribe, from the Oklahoma Territory, attended school here. The first Mexican student arrived in 1876, the first Japanese student in 1888. The first Korean ever to graduate from an American school received his degree here in 1898. In 1930, the college officially became co-educational, though a number of female students had previously attended classes in 1921-1922 after a fire forced all-female Elizabeth College, two miles away, to close.
Roanoke College has continued to grow and become a key member of the Salem community. Today, their student enrollment is approximately 2000, with 131 academic staff members.
[Thanks to the work & writings of Norwood Middleton, John D. Long, and Roanoke College for historic information. Images courtesy of Wikipedia,]