Mount St. Mary's University

The entrance sign to Mount St. Mary's University Mount Saint Mary's was founded by French émigré John DuBois , a French-born Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of New York from 1826 until his death in 1842. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] In 1805, DuBois bought land near Emmitsburg, Maryland on the mountain that Catholic colonists had christened "St. Mary's Mountain," and laid the cornerstone for Saint-Mary's-on-the-Hill church. Parishioners from two local congregations built a one-story, two room log cabin for DuBois, and that cabin was the first structure of Mount Saint Mary's. [ 5 ] The church was completed in 1807. [ 6 ] DuBois first opened a boarding school for children. [ 7 ] Then, in 1808, the Society of St. Sulpice closed Pigeon Hill, its preparatory seminary in Pennsylvania, and transferred all the seminarians to Emmitsburg. [ 8 ] This marked the official beginning of Mount St. Mary's. [ 7 ] [ 9 ] DuBois was appointed president of the college. Simon Bruté , whom President John Quincy Adams called "the most learned man of his day in America," [ 10 ] [ 11 ] joined Mount St. Mary's as teacher and vice-president in 1812. [ 12 ] The small faculty of Mount St. Mary's strove to offer a full high school and college course to lay students and potential priests and developed Mount St. Mary's into "one of the most important ecclesiastical institutions of the country." [ 13 ] DuBois Hall, named for DuBois, was completed in 1826 in what had been a swampy thicket on the mountain. [ 14 ] The first charter for a university was obtained in 1830. Until the early 1900s, Mount St. Mary's also acted as a boarding school. Some remnants of the boarding school, such as Bradley Hall (one of the oldest buildings on campus), still exist. The Mount was known as Mount Saint Mary's College and Seminary until June 7, 2004, when the name was changed to Mount Saint Mary's University.

Saint Joseph College history and merger with Mount Saint Mary's Main article: Saint Joseph College and Mother Seton Shrine Elizabeth Ann Seton , founder of the Sisters of Charity and the first native born United States citizen to be canonized as a saint, [ 15 ] came to Emmitsburg in 1809. She lived on the campus of Mount St. Mary's while her own school was being built. [ 16 ] For a while, she lived in the same log cabin that had been built for DuBois. [ 5 ] In June 1809, Seton established Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School for girls, the first free Catholic parochial school in the United States. [ 17 ] This school is considered to be the foundation of the entire Catholic parochial school system in the United States. [ 18 ] [ 19 ] [ 20 ] Seton wrote classroom textbooks and trained her Catholic sisters to become teachers, [ 21 ] and accepted all students regardless of ability to pay. [ 19 ] Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School developed into Saint Joseph College High School (1890–1946), Saint Joseph's High School (1946–1982), and Saint Joseph College (1902–1973), a four-year liberal arts college for women. [ 5 ] There was a long shared history between Saint Joseph and Mount St. Mary's. In 1815, Seton sent several of the Sisters of Charity to manage the Infirmary at Mount St. Mary's. [ 5 ] As enrollment at Saint Joseph's Academy grew in the 1800s, some professors from Mount St. Mary's were added to the Saint Joseph's faculty. [ 22 ] And, since the campuses of the all-female Saint Joseph College and the all-male Mount St. Mary's were just a couple of miles apart, the schools historically depended on each other for social life. [ 23 ] In 1967, female students at Saint Joseph College began taking some classes at Mount St. Mary's, and men from Mount St. Mary's began taking some classes at Saint Joseph. [ 23 ] In 1973, with declining enrollment numbers and rising operating costs, Saint Joseph College closed its doors and merged with Mount St.

Mary's, which has been fully co-educational since then. [ 24 ]

During World War II, Mount Saint Mary's College was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission. [ 25 ]