The institution opened in January 1908 as the Fourth District Agricultural and Mechanical School with 96 students under Principal John Holland Melson. In 1933, after the state withdrew support from its agricultural high schools and from Bowdon College eleven miles west, it was reorganized as West Georgia College, a junior unit of the University System of Georgia. It became a senior college in 1957 under President Irvine Sullivan Ingram, who led the institution from 1920 to 1960, the longest administrative tenure in the history of the University of Georgia if its system schools are included. The campus originally had two brick buildings, Melson Hall and the Administration building, and Adamson Hall was added in 1917; all stood in 1966 west of this point. The frame structure on this site was built about 1845 as the plantation house of Thomas Bonner, was raided in April 1865 by Federal cavalry under Brigadier-General John T. Croxton, whose campsite was at a road-forks one mile west, and later became the first women's dormitory on the campus; until 1917 it stood 300 yards west of this point. Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the commencement address here in 1929.