Sullins College

Sullins College was a former Methodist, female, junior college in Bristol, Virginia, United States, founded about 1868 and named for David Sullins, a Methodist minister. It ceased operations after the class of 1976 graduated.

The institution was founded in 1870, and, in 1873, it became affiliated with the Methodist Church. It began as a high school and junior college. Its first location was in downtown Bristol.

The entire building burned during Christmas vacation in late December 1915, and the Methodist Church decided not to rebuild. Some of the residents of Bristol prevailed upon William E. Martin, a Methodist pastor in Alabama who earlier had been president of Sullins, to return to Bristol and reopen the school. He did and the school was rebuilt in an entirely new location in a residential area of Bristol, occupying an eminence overlooking the city. No longer a Methodist institution, Martin operated it as a proprietary women's school controlled by his family. It attracted a clientele from among wealthy families throughout the Southeast looking for a junior college with the prestige of being in Virginia. The new facility opened in September 1917.

In the 1930s, Martin opened a subsidiary institution, Arlington Hall, in the Virginia outskirts of Washington, D.C. During World War II, Arlington Hall was closed, and the facilities came under the control of the federal government, which operated it as an American Bletchley Park—a super secret facility where enemy radio messages were carefully decoded. The facility is still a government enterprise.

Sullins College in Bristol remained under the control of the Martin family until the 1960s, when they passed it to an independent board of trustees. The junior college celebrated its centennial in 1970. The college remained in operation and additional buildings were constructed. However, by the 1970s, women’s colleges were no longer as fashionable as they had once been, and as a two-year college, Sullins was particularly vulnerable to changing times. A peak enrollment of almost 400 in 1968 decreased rapidly so that by the fall of 1972 there were only 102 freshmen from 30 states and five foreign countries.