The village of Chagrin, founded in 1798, changed its name in 1834 to honor Dr. Westel Willoughby, a pioneer medical educator. That same year, the Willoughby University of Lake Erie was chartered, and the Willoughby Medical College opened its doors, beginning medical education in northern Ohio. The Medical College trained 160 doctors in contemporary methods of medicine, anatomy, chemistry, and surgery, but financial struggles and public outcry against grave-robbing, which supplied cadavers for anatomy classes, hampered its development. The movement of faculty to Cleveland and the transfer of the state charter to Columbus hastened the Medical College's demise in 1847 and laid the foundation for the medical schools of Case Western and Ohio State universities. The university also pioneered higher education for women in Ohio through the Willoughby Female Seminary, patterned after Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts. Opening in 1847 in the vacated medical building, it offered a three-year course in mathematics, music, art, ancient and modern languages, and philosophy, and enrolled 100 students in its first year. The women's college prospered until a fire destroyed its three-story brick building in 1856, after which Painesville citizens succeeded in raising funds to rebuild the school and opened the Lake Erie Female Seminary, now Lake Erie College, in 1859.