Jacob Gottwals Francis (1870-1958) of Oaks, Pennsylvania, a free minister of the Green Tree Church of the Brethren, strongly believed in higher education at a time when most Brethren shunned that level of study. He graduated from Ursinus College in 1891 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree at the Ursinus School of Theology in 1898, and also studied at Mount Morris College and Union Theological Seminary. In 1898, while in his late twenties, he traveled by bicycle throughout eastern Pennsylvania and the eastern shore of Maryland, photographing Brethren meetinghouses and promoting support for a Brethren school of higher education. After this tour, he sent postal notices on November 17, 1898, inviting elders of the churches in eastern Pennsylvania to meet in Reading to discuss establishing such a school, a process that eventually culminated in the founding of Elizabethtown College.