by encouraging Abraham Lincoln to study for the bar, providing his first set of law books, and serving as Lincoln's professional and political mentor. In 1835, future Liberian Vice President James M. Priest applied to study theology; his application, like all those from Black people, was rejected. From 1830 to 1857, President John C. Young oversaw a vast enlargement of the faculty and a five-fold increase in the student body.
Following the Civil War, Centre affiliated itself with several other educational institutions. From 1894 until 1912, J. Proctor Knott, a former Kentucky governor and U.S. congressman, operated a law school at Centre as its dean. The Centre College Board of Trustees controlled the Kentucky School for the Deaf, also in Danville, during its early years; consolidated the college with the Central University in Richmond, Kentucky in 1901; from the time of the merger with Central University in 1901 until 1918 Centre College went by the name "Central University of Kentucky". It merged with Danville's …
