Mount Saint Mary's University

cabin was the first structure of Mount Saint Mary's. The church was completed in 1807. DuBois first opened a boarding school for children. Then, in 1808, the Society of St. Sulpice closed Pigeon Hill, its preparatory seminary in Pennsylvania, and transferred all the seminarians to Emmitsburg. This marked the official beginning of Mount St. Mary's. DuBois was appointed president of the college. Simon Bruté, whom President John Quincy Adams called "the most learned man of his day in America," joined Mount St. Mary's as teacher and vice-president in 1812. The small faculty of Mount St. Mary's strove to offer a full high school and college course to lay students and potential priests and developed Mount St. Mary's into "one of the most important ecclesiastical institutions of the country." DuBois Hall, named for DuBois, was completed in 1826 in what had been a swampy thicket on the mountain. The first charter for a university was obtained in 1830. Until the early 1900s, Mount St. Mary's also acted as a boarding school. …