Mansfield: The Seminary That Burned and Came Back

Mansfield was settled in eighteen oh four when Asa Mann laid out a town plan on his Tioga County land, but the borough's defining moment came more than fifty years later. The borough itself was incorporated in eighteen fifty-seven, the same year the seminary opened, and Mann's estate was known as Mann's field. On January seventh, eighteen fifty-seven, the Mansfield Classical Seminary opened its doors, a private school intended to serve students from across northern Pennsylvania.

It lasted less than four months. On April twenty-second of that same year, with a foot of snow still on the ground, the seminary burned to the ground. The founders rebuilt.

The school reopened in November of eighteen fifty-nine, and within three years had reinvented itself as the state normal school at Mansfield, one of the first teacher-training institutions in the commonwealth. From state normal school it became a state teachers college, then a state college, and today operates as Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania, Mansfield campus. The original mission, training teachers for rural Pennsylvania, has never fully departed.

Mansfield also made football history. On September twenty-eighth, eighteen ninety-two, the school then called Mansfield State Normal hosted the first football game played at night under electric lights, sponsored by the Edison Illuminating Company.