page_title: Carthage College
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Carthage College / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Carthage College, Carthage, Illinois, 1930s
context_page_description: Carthage College is a private liberal arts college affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and located in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It enrolls 2,600 full-time and 200 part-time students.
  Carthage awards bachelor's degrees with majors in more than 40 subject areas and master's degrees in three areas. Carthage has 150 faculty. It is the coordinator for the Wisconsin Space Grant Consortium.
context_section_description: Carthage College was founded by Lutheran pioneers in education, and chartered by the Illinois General Assembly on January 22, 1847. Originally known as The Literary and Theological Institute of the Lutheran Church in the Far West, its name was soon shortened to Lutheran College and known locally as Hillsboro College. With a two-person faculty and 79 students, Hillsboro promised "a course of study designed to be thorough and practical, and to embrace all the branches of learning, usually pursued in the best academies and colleges".
  In 1852, the college moved to Springfield, Illinois, and assumed the name of Illinois State University. During this period, Abraham Lincoln served briefly on the Board of Trustees from 1860 to 1861, while his son Robert Todd Lincoln was a student in Illinois State University's preparatory academy from 1853 to 1859. Illinois State University's enrollment dwindled during the Civil War and closed in 1868. In 1870, several faculty reestablished the college in the rural west-central city of Carthage, Illinois, where the college acquired its current name.
  The Great Depression and World War II lowered enrollment to 131 students in 1943, but enrollment increased again after the war as a result of the G.I. Bill. 
  After years of financial challenges, shifts in Lutheran synodical support, and searches for a suitable location, Carthage's board of trustees voted unanimously in 1957 to open a campus in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The lakeshore campus was dedicated on October 14, 1962.
  By 1962, the college launched an era of growth. The next decade brought a period of continuous expansion. Enrollment increased fivefold, endowment tripled, and physical assets increased 600 percent. In Fall 1995, Carthage enrolled 1,527 full-time students, setting a new record. Intensive national searches have built a teaching-oriented faculty holding Ph.D.s from major graduate programs across the country. Since 2001, the College has invested more than $130 million in new construction, major renovations and technological acquisition.
caption: Carthage College in Illinois in the 1930s
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