Huntingdon College: From Tuskegee Female College to Montgomery

Alabama Governor John Winston signed the charter for Tuskegee Female College on February second, eighteen fifty-four. The school opened two years later as a Methodist institution for women, then changed its name to Alabama Conference Female College when the church took full control in eighteen seventy-two.

In nineteen oh nine the board of trustees moved the college from Tuskegee to Montgomery, acquiring fifty-eight acres in the Cloverdale neighborhood. Then in nineteen thirty-five it received the name it carries today, honoring Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, an eighteenth-century English noblewoman who was one of the earliest and most influential figures in the Methodist movement. The college began admitting male students in the nineteen thirties and went fully coeducational in nineteen fifty-four. Today it remains a small liberal arts college tied to the United Methodist Church, holding down a leafy corner of residential Montgomery a mile from the state capitol.