Emory College was chartered on December 19, 1836, as Georgia Methodists expanded their educational program, drawing on the Georgia Methodist Conference Manual Labor School established near Covington in 1834. Named for Methodist Bishop John Emory, the college took shape in 1837 when 1,452 acres were purchased and 330 acres were set aside for a Christian collegiate community called Oxford, planned by Methodist minister and surveyor Edward Lloyd Thomas so that its main streets converged on the college’s central building site. Lots were first offered on long lease and later for sale under rules forbidding intoxicating liquors and games of hazard. Ignatius Alphonso Few became the first president on December 8, 1837, the cornerstone of the first building was laid in 1838, and the first freshman and sophomore classes were organized on September 17, 1838. Oxford was incorporated on December 23, 1839, and for decades the histories of the town, the college, and Methodism remained closely intertwined. After Emory College moved to Atlanta in 1919 and became the College of Arts and Sciences of Emory University, Oxford remained tied to that legacy as the home of Emory’s junior college, later Oxford College of Emory University. Oxford’s historic landscape reflects that shared history through buildings and sites linked to worship, commencements, literary societies, Civil War hospitals and burials, college administration, scientific and technological education, Methodist leadership, and notable figures including Atticus G. Haygood, Alexander Means, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, George Foster Pierce, Warren Akin Candler, Isaac Siles Hopkins, and others whose lives connected the town, the college, and the Methodist church.