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Lake City, Florida: A Sesquicentennial Tribute (2009) H. Morris Williams, Dr. Kevin M. McCarthy

Chapter Eight 1880 - 1889

The Florida Agricultural College

In 1884, Florida Agricultural College (FAC) opened in Lake
City after officials considered proposals from Gainesville, Lake City,
Live Oak, Madison, Ocala, and Tallahassee. What probably clinched
the deal for Lake City was its
offer of $15,000 in cash and a
100-acre site for the school about
a mile south of the courthouse.
Officials dedicated the first
building on February 21, 1884, a
huge day of celebration in Lake
City.

The first president of the
new college, which at first had
only male students and which
apparently was the first and - for
a time - the only four-year college
in Florida, was Ashley Hurt, a Ashley Hurt, first
former Confederate naval man president of FAC
and educator from Kentucky. When he arrived in Lake City, he was
deeply disappointed in the site, writing home to his wife that he thought
Tallahassee would have been better for the school. He left after seven
months.

FAC was the first institution in Florida to call itself a college.
The students were as young as fifteen and had to pass an entrance
examination to be admitted to the freshman class. So few students
were eligible to attend the college because of a lack of secondary
schools in the state that a sub-collegiate department was established.

The second president of FAC was Alexander Holladay from
Virginia, a scholar who had studied Latin and Greek at the University

of Berlin as well as law and modern languages at the University of
Virginia.
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