Muskingum Academy, 1797 – Birth of Higher Education in Ohio / Marietta College, 1835

Side A: In April 1797, a committee of Marietta citizens, led by General Rufus Putnam, met to establish an academy suitable for preparatory instruction for their youth. Muskingum Academy, completed late that year, became the first institution of its kind in the Northwest Territory, providing “classical instruction… in the higher branches of an English education.” Its first instructor was David Putnam, a 1793 Yale graduate. The building also served as the home of the Congregationalist Church until 1808. Growing and expanding with Ohio’s first city, the academy served Marietta’s educational needs for more than thirty years as the forerunner of Marietta College. Side B: Founded as a non-denominational Christian college, Marietta College has its roots in several predecessor institutions in Marietta, beginning with Muskingum Academy in 1797. In the spring of 1832, a committee of Marietta citizens, led by Dr. S.P. Hildreth chartered the Marietta Collegiate Institute as an outgrowth of Reverend Luther G. Bingham’s 1830 Institute of Education. When it opened in 1835, Marietta College boasted a faculty of five professors and offered a full collegiate course of instruction in moral and intellectual philosophy, Greek, Latin, mathematics, physics, rhetoric, and political economy. Professor Israel W. Andrews led the college as its president from 1838 to 1885; his geological theories laid the framework of Marietta College’s lasting eminence in the field of petroleum engineering. Erwin Hall, built in 1832-1834, is the oldest building on campus.