History of University of North Georgia

The University of North Georgia was first established at the site of its current campus in Dahlonega, Georgia in 1873 as North Georgia Agricultural College (NGAC). In 2013 North Georgia College & State University was consolidated with Gainesville State College to form the University of North Georgia.

From 1851-1861 (the last ten years of its use) the Dahlonega Gold Mint was minting more gold from California than from Georgia. Consequently, following the Civil War the Treasury Department felt it would be impractical to resume minting operations at the Dahlonega Mint. A few years after the war a former Confederate soldier and President of the Lumpkin County Board of Education by the name of William Pierce Price devised a plan to employ the land script of the Morrill Act to transform the old mint building into a college. In the early stages of this transformation the school was identified as an academy, rather than a university- implying that it was originally intended to serve as a feeder school for the Georgia College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts (predecessor of the University of Georgia). However, in 1876 the Superior Court of Lumpkin County gave the school the ability to grant bachelor's and master's degrees.

The college began formally enrolling students in January 1873. In its first year, the school enrolled 98 males and 79 females, making it the first college in the state to offer co-educational enrollment. Shortly thereafter in 1878, it became the first co-ed college in the state to graduate a female student. The school's first president was David W. Lewis. Lewis was fervently devoted to the development of the institution. Upon his arrival he donated his personal library to the school. In addition to serving as the school's president, he also served as one of the two professors at the school- teaching Greek and English literature. For about the first thirty years of North Georgia Agricultural College's history it was mostly an agricultural college in name alone. It was only in 1902 that the college established its first and only agricultural chair. In essence NGAC was a liberal arts college, focusing more on courses such as law, Latin, Greek, English literature, theoretical mathematics, natural sciences, history, and philosophy. In addition to its liberal arts curriculum the college also made military training compulsory- as was stipulated by the Morrill Land Act to all land-grant colleges. This requirement marked the beginning of the University of North Georgia’s enduring military identity. This military program's cadet corps eventually became involved in the newly established Reserve Officers' Training Corps(ROTC) in 1916.

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