Kentucky Wesleyan College was once a Winchester institution of higher learning

Older cit­i­zens can recall when Winchester was a bustling col­lege town.  Kentucky Wesleyan’s six­ty-one-year res­i­dence here end­ed in 1951.  The cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic loss­es to the city and coun­ty when the school moved to Owensboro are immea­sur­able.  But, as I heard one say, “We stole the col­lege from Millersburg, and then Owensboro stole it from us.”  After spend­ing a few days at home research­ing the col­lege, I thought it might be worth­while to share a bit of its history.

The Methodist Episcopal Church estab­lished Kentucky Wesleyan College at Millersburg in 1858.  The divi­sive issue of slav­ery delayed open­ing the school until after the Civil War.  Classes final­ly began in the fall of 1866.  The orig­i­nal mis­sion was to train Methodist min­is­ters, but soon expand­ed to include lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion.  By 1886, the school was strug­gling.  Enrollment had fall­en and finances were in sham­bles.  The Kentucky Methodist Conference invit­ed pro­pos­als from oth­er cities that were more gen­er­ous and offered bet­ter access for students. 

Calling on its lead­ing cit­i­zens, Winchester raised $35,000, donat­ed five acres of land and tout­ed its supe­ri­or loca­tion for the school.  While Millersburg was sit­u­at­ed on a branch line rail­road, Winchester had two major rail­roads and would soon add a third. 

Church fathers approved the move, but Millersburg chal­lenged the deci­sion.  They lost their suit in Bourbon Circuit Court, and the deci­sion was upheld at the Court of Appeals.  Their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court nev­er got a hear­ing.  The col­lege packed up and moved to Winchester for the 1890–1891 school year.

Student class­es were held in the old Governor Clark man­sion while a new three-sto­ry col­lege build­ing was under con­struc­tion.  President D. W. Batson and three oth­er pro­fes­sors com­posed the fac­ul­ty for 125 stu­dents.  Opened for the fall semes­ter of 1891, the new admin­is­tra­tion build­ing also housed class­rooms, offices, lab­o­ra­to­ry and library.  In 1892 the school approved accept­ing women for enroll­ment, thus becom­ing the first coed col­lege in Kentucky.  A men’s dor­mi­to­ry, Clark Hall, was added in 1894.

Disaster struck on Tuesday, February 14, 1905.  With the tem­per­a­ture dip­ping below zero and the col­lege fur­naces going full blast, fire broke out in one of the wood­en cold-air returns about 9 o’clock in the morn­ing.  Windows, bro­ken by the heat, allowed air in to fuel the blaze, and two thou­sand bushels of coal in the base­ment caught fire adding to the fury.  In spite of the weath­er, huge crowds gath­ered at the scene.  The build­ing was reduced to a smol­der­ing ruin.

Before the fire was out, the Winchester Commercial Club had met and resolved to assist in find­ing tem­po­rary quar­ters for the col­lege and to sup­port the speedy erec­tion of a new build­ing.  Classes recon­vened on Thursday.  The com­mu­ni­ty raised $24,000 to go with $20,000 from the insur­ance.  With the fund­ing in hand, bids were award­ed in May for a three-sto­ry, colo­nial-style col­lege build­ing.  All the work went to local con­trac­tors except struc­tur­al iron work.  The fin­ished build­ing opened in May 1906. 

Kentucky Wesleyan con­tin­ued its recov­ery with a $15,000 grant from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation for a new library.  Other improve­ments includ­ed a girl’s dor­mi­to­ry (1917), a sec­ond men’s dorm (1922) and gym (1925).  The stu­dent pop­u­la­tion aver­aged around two hundred.

All was not well at Wesleyan, how­ev­er.  The col­lege had endured years of finan­cial stress.  The Methodists had three col­leges to support—Kentucky Wesleyan, Union in Barbourville, and Lindsey-Wilson in Columbia.  The most the church ever con­tributed totaled $31,800 in 1946, which was split three ways.  Bishop Watkins opined that “We have trough enough for one horse and three are try­ing to eat of that.”  In 1950, the church vot­ed to move Kentucky Wesleyan to Owensboro, where cit­i­zens pledged $1,000,000 for the school.

That year, William C. Caywood, edi­tor of the Winchester Sun, penned a thought­ful arti­cle about the move, pub­lished in the Filson Club Historical Quarterly.  He warned that Owensboro’s pledge “must be fol­lowed by a per­pet­u­al flow of cash—an expe­ri­ence Wesleyan has nev­er known.”  Caywood was real­is­tic about the need for the move: 

“Sentimentalists who might be dis­posed to over-valu­ing the tra­di­tion, lore, his­to­ry and good-will are to be remind­ed that it long since has been accept­ed as fact that ample endow­ment and a steady flow of five- and six-fig­ure dona­tions are more impor­tant to sus­te­nance.  The ivy-cov­ered col­lege strong in its tra­di­tion and weak in its trea­sury belongs to the glo­ry of the past.  Privately-owned and church-sup­port­ed col­leges of today are cost­ly lux­u­ries depen­dent upon the waver­ing gen­eros­i­ty of the respec­tive constituents.”

Kentucky Wesleyan has indeed flour­ished in Owensboro.  They now have an endow­ment of $37,000,000 and enrolled 864 stu­dents for the 2024–25 school year.  As a bonus, they have pro­duced out­stand­ing ath­let­ic teams that includ­ed win­ning eight Division II nation­al cham­pi­onships in basketball.

All that remains of Wesleyan in Winchester is the Spencer Gymnasium and the Carnegie Library.