Cumberland College (Princeton, Kentucky)

Cumberland College in Princeton, Kentucky, was founded in 1826 and operated until 1861. It was the first college affiliated with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In 1842, the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination withdrew its support from Cumberland College in favor of Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee. In doing so, the denomination intended to simply relocate the school from Princeton to Lebanon, but Cumberland College remained open without denominational support until the Civil War.

On October 22, 1825, Cumberland Synod, the ruling judicatory of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, resolved to establish a college somewhere in southwestern Kentucky. The school's primary purpose was to educate young men who wanted to become ministers, but the school would be open to all. The school would also require students to perform manual labor for two to three hours a day. The synod appointed a commission to determine a site for the college. The commission considered four towns in Kentucky (Hopkinsville, Russellville, Elkton, and Princeton) and finally chose Princeton on January 13, 1826. The commission hired Franceway R. Cossitt, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, as the college's president and sole teacher. Classes first began on March 1, 1826. By the end of the year, the college had about sixty students and had hired another teacher. Originally the college was named, as the synod had resolved, the Cumberland Presbyterian College. However, when the synod requested a charter for the college, members of the Kentucky legislature worried that the original name would stoke sectarian conflict. The legislature therefore dropped "Presbyterian" from the name and issued a charter to Cumberland College on January 8, 1827.

Cumberland College was part of a larger manual labor movement, as other schools like the Oneida Institute and Oberlin College required students to perform physical labor in addition to their study. The synod hoped that manual labor would prevent students from sacrificing "bodily vigor" at the expense of "mental energy." The college had a working farm, and students worked on the farm two hours a day.

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