University of Louisville

The University of Louisville traces its roots back to 1798 when the Kentucky General Assembly chartered a school of higher learning in the newly established town of Louisville and ordered the sale of 6,000 acres (24 km˛) of South Central Kentucky land to pay for its implementation. On April 3, 1798, eight community leaders began local fund raising for the school, then known as the Jefferson Seminary. It opened 15 years later in 1813 and offered college and high school level courses in a variety of subjects. It was headed by Edward Mann Butler from 1813 to 1816, who later headed the first public school in Kentucky in 1829 and is considered Kentucky's first historian. Despite its early success, pressure from newly established public schools and media critiques of it as "elitist" would force its closure in 1829