Founded in 1818 in New Athens, Ohio, by abolitionist Presbyterian minister John Walker, Alma College was renamed Franklin College in 1825 and combined education with a mission of religion and antislavery reform. Though small, it produced two governors, eight U.S. senators, nine members of Congress, and twenty state legislators, and educated Titus Basfield, a former slave, along with several prominent women. The current red-brick building, designed by Joseph W. Yost after an earlier structure burned in 1899, dates to 1900. After the college closed here in 1919, it served other schools before becoming the Franklin Museum in 1992.