a number of Methodist ministers, the school offered English, Latin, Greek, French, and piano.
As was common among female seminaries during Reconstruction, Farmville Female College, as the institution was then known, fell into a period of deep financial difficulty. The decade following the Civil War saw many seminaries around the South shutter their doors. The college was given new life on June 5, 1875, with a new charter granted and the college renamed Farmville College. Paul Whitehead, a minister from nearby Nelson County, Virginia, who had been president of Wesleyan Female College at Murfreesboro, North Carolina, was appointed president. Under Whitehead, enrollment grew by nearly half, topping 100 students in 1876. Whitehead resigned in 1872 to return to full-time ministry.
=== Normal School (1884–1949) ===
Farmville College was reinvented once again on March 7, 1884, as the State Female Normal School—the brainchild of William Henry Ruffner, the first Virginia State Superintendent of Instruction. Modeled …
