"Melody Marion and Amanda Ford trace the formation of this Jefferson City, Tennessee, institution from its founding as Mossy Creek Missionary Baptist Seminary in 1850 to the one-hundred-and-twenty acre university campus that is Carson-Newman today. Along the way, Marion and Ford discuss the school's Baptist foundations, its coeducational merger in the late nineteenth century, a string of presidents both exceptional and misguided, and its expansion from college to university in the twenty-first century"--

This pictorial history of Carson-Newman College illustrates the people, places, and events that have shaped this institution's legacy. Carson-Newman College, a private, Christian liberal arts college, is located in Jefferson City, Tennessee, approximately 25 miles east of Knoxville. In the early 1840s, a number of Baptist leaders desired to offer better-prepared ministers to area congregations. Afforded the use of a local Baptist church building, Mossy Creek Missionary Baptist Seminary opened to students in the fall of 1851. In 1880, the school was named Carson College and for several years existed alongside Newman College, a separate facility for the education of women. In 1889, the two colleges united as one of the first coeducational Baptist institutions. As Carson-Newman College celebrates 160 years of rich history steeped in the ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness, it continues to prepare students academically and spiritually to meet the challenges of the 21st century.