page_title: Spring Hill College
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Spring Hill College / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Spring Hill College, Original Building, Old Shell Road, Spring Hill, Mobile County, AL. This structure burned in 1869.
context_page_description: Spring Hill College is a private, Jesuit college in Mobile, Alabama. It was founded in 1830 by Michael Portier, Bishop of Mobile. Along with being the oldest college or university in the state of Alabama, it was the first Catholic college in the South, is the fifth-oldest Catholic college in the United States, and is the third-oldest member of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.
context_section_description: Spring Hill College was founded by the first bishop of Mobile, Michael Portier, who was from France. After purchasing a site for the college on a hill near Mobile, Bishop Portier went to France to recruit teachers and raise funds for the new college. Portier recruited two priests and four seminarians from France to staff the school. A friend of Portier, Cardinal Joseph Fesch, Archbishop of Lyons, was a major benefactor to the fledgling College, donating his philosophical and theological library and various works of art. Pauline Jaricot, founder of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, donated 38,000 francs, an enormous sum in those days.
  The bishop himself taught theology to the ecclesiastical students, who numbered six the first year. Upon his return from France, Portier rented a hotel next to the college grounds and started the first semester on May 1, 1830, with an enrollment of thirty students. On July 4 of the same year, the bishop laid the cornerstone of the first permanent building. It stood on the site of the present Administration Building and opened for classes in November 1831. Spring Hill is the oldest institution of higher education in Alabama and among the oldest colleges in the South. It is the third-oldest Jesuit college in the United States.
  In 1836 the governor of Alabama, Clement C. Clay, signed a legislative act that chartered the college and gave it "full power to grant or confer such degree or degrees in the arts and sciences, or in any art or science as are usually granted or conferred by other seminaries of learning in the United States." This power was used in the following year, 1837, when four graduates received their degrees.
  The first two presidents of the college were called away to be bishops, one to Dubuque, Iowa (Bishop Mathias Loras), the other to Vincennes, Indiana (Bishop John Stephen Bazin). The third president, Father Mauvernay, died after a brief term of office. Bishop Portier transferred the College, first to the French Fathers of Mercy, and next to the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, but both groups lacked teaching and administrative experience.
  He persuaded the Fathers of the Lyonnais Province of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) to take possession of the college. The new regime was inaugurated with Father Francis Gautrelet, S.J., as president in September 1847. Since that time the institution has continued under Jesuit direction.
  Many boys were sent to Spring Hill during the American Civil War as they neared the draft age. But numerous students wanted to be part of the war effort.  The college eventually formed two military companies. Some of Spring Hill's Jesuit fathers became chaplains for the Confederacy. A recruiter tried to conscript all forty of the Jesuit brothers at the college into the Confederate Army. The college president, Gautrelet, dispatched an urgent message to the assistant secretary of war in Richmond, who granted a temporary reprieve of the brothers' conscription.
  During the Reconstruction era, the College recruited students from among the sons of Central American and Cuban leaders. Following student complaints that Spanish was challenging the dominance of English on the campus, the Jesuits organized a Spanish–American league.  In 1869 a fire destroyed the main building. Students and faculty had to relocate for a time to St. Charles College in Grand Coteau, Louisiana.  Bishop John Quinlan and other benefactors assisted in rebuilding the college, which reopened at Spring Hill before the year's end.
  As the enrollment increased, Quinlan Hall, St. Joseph's Chapel, the Thomas Byrne Memorial Library, and Mobile Hall were erected. In 1935, the high school, which had been a unit distinct from the college since 1923, was discontinued. In the space vacated by the high school, the Jesuit House of Studies was opened in 1937, and the Scholasticate of the Sacred Heart opened on a site adjoining the college a few years later.
  After World War II, a great influx of veterans taxed the facilities of the college, which erected numerous temporary buildings on the campus to han
caption: The original main building, built in 1831.
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