Lebanon, Illinois: Illinois's Oldest College

Lebanon, Illinois, is a quiet St. Clair County town with a quietly historic distinction: its college is the oldest in the state. Pioneer Methodists founded Lebanon Seminary in eighteen twenty-eight, opening the school in two rented sheds for seventy-two students.

Two years later, Bishop William McKendree, the first American-born bishop of the Methodist church, gave the institution his name and deeded four hundred eighty acres of rich Illinois land to support it. The school received one of the first charters granted to an independent church college by the Illinois legislature in eighteen thirty-five. McKendree University, as it is known today, holds the unbroken record as Illinois's oldest continuously operating institution of higher education, and its ties to the United Methodist Church make it the oldest such college in the nation.