• Sketch
• Collection Description
• Series A Correspondence
• Series B Minutes
• Series C Reports
• Series D Oaths of Office, Miscellaneous Papers

See Centre College Digital Archives - Board of Trustees for digitized versions of selected items from the following inventory

The Centre College Board of Trustees could well trace its ancestry back to 1780, when the Virginia Assembly granted 8000 acres of land and vested it in a board of trustees for the purpose of establishing a "public school or seminary of learning." The trustees held their initial meeting November 19, 1783, at John Crow's station near Danville and finally opened a grammar school on February 1, 1785, on or near the residence of the Rev. David Rice, a pioneer Presbyterian preacher.

In 1789, however, the young academy (Transylvania) had relocated in Lexington, taking advantage of a larger population center. The Presbyterians lost control of the academy in Lexington and decided in 1794 to found a grammar school and seminary at Pisgah, about nine miles south of Lexington. Soon a charter was obtained from the legislature for an institution to be known as the Kentucky Academy. Appeals for funds for the new academy met with generous response, and money flowed in - indeed donors included such illustrious figures as George Washington and John Adams. Sensing their own school weakening, the leaders of the Lexington academy made a major bid for consolidation with the Kentucky academy, and the Presbyterian leaders at Pisgah accepted. Now the Presbyterians were back in Lexington, commanding a majority of the Board of Trustees and substantial control of the school.

Transylvania remained under Presbyterian control for twenty years, but again their influence was dwindling as they lost board members. Finally, in 1817, the legislature appointed a new board - without a single Presbyterian board member. The Presbyterians regrouped and in October, 1818, petitioned the legislature for a charter for a new institution to be called Centre College of Kentucky. The legislature was far from eager to set up a rival for Transylvania and refused to charter a college under the control of the Presbyterian Synod. The charter granted by the legislature, (dated January 21, 1819) placed control in the hands of a self-perpetuating board of nineteen trustees. The first board consisted of those men who had petitioned for the charter and included some of the most prominent figures in early Kentucky history, including ex-Governor Isaac Shelby (Chairman), Chief Justice John Boyle, William Owsley, Judge Samuel McKee, Rev. Thomas Cleland, Rev. Samuel Nelson, Rev. Nathan Hall, James Barbour and Danville medical pioneer Dr. Ephraim McDowell. The charter granted by the legislature established Centre as a non-sectarian institution, and the Presbyterians refused to endow the college on those grounds. The funds of the Danville Academy were turned over to the trustees, and in 1821 the legislature turned over 6,000 in profits from the branch bank of the Commonwealth at Harrodsburg, but the college was in dire financial straits.

Through a legislative act of January 27, 1824, the trustees "were authorized to receive gifts which shall be applied to the uses and purposes designated by the donors or to establish and maintain one or more professorships of theology." All denominations had the privilege of establishing professorships of the college, and no student could be excluded from Centre on religious grounds.

On December 27, 1824, an amendment was approved which gave control of Centre to the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. An agreement was reached whereby the Presbyterian Church of Kentucky would give 20,000 to the trustees of Centre if the number of trustees was reduced to eleven and elected by the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of the United States. The number of trustees reverted to nineteen, however, by an act approved February 1, 1839.

The Centre Board of Trustees, in 1822, was also charged with the operation of what is now The Kentucky School for the Deaf and was empowered to oversee the finances, hire and fire personnel, and other accompanying duties. In January 1823 the trustees met to put the school in operating order. The trustees remained in control of the school until an act of the Legislature dated January 7, 1870, when governing powers were vested in a board of twelve Commissioners appointed by the Governor.

At present Centre is governed by a self perpetuating Board of Trustees. "The Board has delegated the administration, educational program and discipline of the College to the President, the Provost, the Council of the College, and the Faculty, within the general policies determined by the Board."

Note: For additional information on the history of the Board of Trustees, please consult the "Legal History of Centre College" by Charles J. Turck, and pertinent materials in CC-4 Early Official Documents and Legal Papers.

The Centre College Board of Trustees collection was compiled from a mass of papers found in various campus locations in the early 1980's. Since no clearly defined subdivisions existed, the material was simply divided by type of document, assigned a series letter, and then arranged chronologically.

Series A, approximately half of the collection, consists of correspondence to, or from, members of the Board and the secretary and financial agent/treasurer, who served as agents of the college's governing body. A significant percentage of the collection deals with fund raising efforts by Centre, and efforts by the financial agents to collect on subscriptions made to the college. Other prominent subjects include: The Kentucky School for the Deaf (then known as the Deaf and Dumb Asylum); efforts to select presidents; faculty relations; consolidation (and aftermath) of Centre and Central University (Richmond, Ky.); consolidation of Centre and Kentucky College for Women; Carnegie foundation grants; and erection of college buildings, particularly Old Main, the "new" Boyle Humphrey Gymnasium (Sutcliffe Hall) and the old octagonal Sayre Library.

This collection of correspondence is largely a "patchwork" collection and by no means covers all the vital issues tackled by the board since its inception. The correspondence, for example, from the 1820's to the 1850's is quite diverse, while the correspondence from the 1860's deals almost exclusively with efforts by the financial agent to collect on delinquent subscriptions. A central figure in much of the later correspondence is John Adison Cheek who served as treasurer of Centre from approximately 1889 to 1933.

Series B consists of perhaps the most important chronicle of Centre's history - the volumes containing the minutes of the Centre College Board of Trustees, 1819-1853, 1863-1966. Minutes from 1819 to 1916 have been digitized, and are available from the Centre College Digital Archives.

Interesting circumstances surround volume 2 of the minutes. The volume had been missing for at least forty years when it was discovered by Dr. Miller Hillhouse in a shed between his Danville house on North Fourth Street and the home of Miss Mary Ashby Cheek on North Third Street. The minutes were believed to have been placed in the shed along with other old books and papers in the mid-1930's after the death of Miss Cheek's father, J. A. Cheek. The fate of the volume containing the minutes from 1853-1863 (one of the most interesting decades in Centre's history) remains a mystery.

Series C contains miscellaneous reports written by the Board, or committees of the Board, while Series D contains miscellaneous papers concerning the Board, including certificates or pledges for members taking the oath of office and texts of speeches and essays by members of the board.

Annual Reports to the Board may be located in CC-2 Centre College Presidents.