Ayden's Lost Colleges
North Carolina
The little town of Ayden, in Pitt County, once had not one but two college campuses within a half mile of where you are now.
In the early eighteen nineties, the Disciples of Christ opened Carolina Christian College a few blocks northeast of here. It did not last long. Barton College in Wilson, which grew from a separate school founded in nineteen oh two, is not its direct descendant.
A few years later, Free Will Baptists founded Ayden Seminary a few blocks to the southeast. That school was later renamed Eureka College and operated until a fire destroyed its administration building in nineteen thirty-one. Out of that tradition, Free Will Baptists went on to establish a junior college in nineteen fifty-one that moved to Mount Olive in nineteen fifty-three and is now the University of Mount Olive, which today enrolls several thousand students and holds regional accreditation.
Two small-town campuses, both gone. One living college, a distant descendant of the second.
