Founded in 1833, Oberlin College and its surrounding community grew from Reverend John Jay Shipherd’s and Philo Penfield Stewart’s vision of an educational institution and colony dedicated to the glory of God and named for John Frederick Oberlin, a pastor in France’s Alsace-Lorraine region. Early colonists pledged themselves to the plainest living and highest thinking. Known as the Oberlin Collegiate Institute until 1850, when it became Oberlin College, it was the first coeducational institution to grant bachelor’s degrees to women and long led in the education of African Americans. In defiance of Ohio’s Black laws, African American and white children studied together in the town’s one-room schoolhouse, built in 1836-1837. Before the Civil War, Oberlin became an abolitionist center and a major stop on the Underground Railroad, while also taking part in reform movements including women’s rights, suffrage, temperance, and village improvement. Local abolitionists held differing views, with some relying on prayer, others on political action, and a few accepting violence. Among prominent figures were Giles Shurtleff, an abolitionist, professor, and army general who led the first African American regiment from Ohio to serve in the Civil War, and James Monroe, Oberlin’s best-known political abolitionist, who was a professor, a U.S. Congressman, and the U.S. consul in Brazil during the Civil War; his wife Julia was a daughter of Charles Grandison Finney.