Franklin & Marshall College

Franklin & Marshall College is the thirteenth oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Benjamin Rush, who was largely responsible for the establishment of Franklin College in 1787, anticipated that it would promote the assimilation of Pennsylvania’s Germanic population as contributing citizens of the new republic. The founders included four signers of the Declaration of Independence, three future governors of Pennsylvania, and four members of the Constitutional Convention. Named after Benjamin Franklin, its first benefactor, in 1853 Franklin College merged with Marshall College, which had been established by the German Reformed Church in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, in 1836. Marshall College bought the faculty and the constellation of intellectual values that guided Franklin & Marshall over the next half-century. This collection of photographs presents important parts of Franklin & Marshall’s history: the evolution of the campus, the establishment of intercollegiate athletic teams and social fraternities, curricular innovations, U.S. Navy programs that kept the college alive during World War II, the decision to become coeducational, and the emergence of Franklin & Marshall as a national liberal arts college.