Genesee College

Genesee College was a college founded in 1832 as the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary by the Methodist Episcopal Church. It was located in Lima, NY and eventually relocated to Syracuse, NY, becoming Syracuse University.

Genesee Wesleyan Seminary

In 1832, the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary was founded by the Genesee Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Lima, New York, south of Rochester.Fact|date=September 2008 The Rev. Dr. Samuel Luckey was elected the first Principal of the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, and was transferred from the New York Annual Conference of the M.E. Church to the Genesee Conference.Fact|date=September 2008 He remained in this office until 1836, when he was elected by the M.E. General Conference as the Editor of The Christian Advocate and Journal, an important denominational periodical.Fact|date=September 2008

The institution is said to have "opened most favorably," with a total enrollment the first year (1831-32) of 341, with 170-180 students attending at any one time.Fact|date=September 2008 The Agents of the seminary solicited funds for the construction of buildings. In 1880, Bishop Matthew Simpson of the M.E. Church described the seminary's early years thus "no other institution in the church accomplishing apparently more in the education of active and useful young men and young women."Fact|date=September 2008 The early years of the institution were said to be ones of "great prosperity."Fact|date=September 2008 This was especially true under the administrations of the Rev. Schuyler Seager. Seager was born 8 July 1807 in Simsbury, Connecticut.Fact|date=September 2008 He joined the Genesee Conference in 1833.Fact|date=September 2008 He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1836.Fact|date=September 2008 That same year he was appointed Teacher of Moral Science and Belles-Lettres in the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary.Fact|date=September 2008 He was chosen as Principal of the seminary in 1837.Fact|date=September 2008 After entering pastoral ministry in 1844, he returned to the seminary in 1854, again as Principal.Fact|date=September 2008 In 1856-57 he was made Principal of the Genesee Model School in Lima, New York, an offshoot of the seminary.Fact|date=September 2008

Genesee College

In 1850 it was resolved to enlarge the institution from a seminary into a college, or to connect a college with the seminary. The Rev. Dr. Benjamin Franklin Tefft was elected President of this endeavor.Fact|date=September 2008 The name was chosen as Genesee College. However, the location was thought by many not to be sufficiently central. Its difficulties were compounded by the next set of technological changes: the railroad that displaced the Erie Canal as the region's economic engine bypassed Lima completely. In 1866, after several hard years, the trustees of the struggling college decided to seek a locale whose economic and transportation advantages could provide a better base of support.Fact|date=September 2008 As Genesee College began looking for a new home, the bustling community of Syracuse, ninety miles to the east, was engaged in a search of its own. The rail age had expanded the prosperity brought by the Erie Canal, and the city was booming, but its citizens yearned for something more:

"What gives to Oxford and Cambridge, England, to Edinburgh, Scotland, to New Haven, Connecticut, their most illustrious names abroad?" asked one local writer. "Their Universities," he answered. "Syracuse has all the advantages: business, social, and religious – let her add the educational and she adds to her reputation, her desirability." [W. Freeman Galpin, Syracuse University: The Pioneer Years (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,, 1952)]

After a year of dispute between the Methodist ministers, Lima and contending cities across the state, it was resolved to remove the college to Syracuse, New York to become the nucleus of Syracuse University.Fact|date=September 2008 The college, its libraries, the students and faculty, and the college's two secret societies all relocated to Syracuse.