Spring Hill College

was founded by the first bishop of Mobile, Michael Portier, who was from France. After purchasing a site for the college on a hill near Mobile, Bishop Portier went to France to recruit teachers and raise funds for the new college. Portier recruited two priests and four seminarians from France to staff the school. A friend of Portier, Cardinal Joseph Fesch, Archbishop of Lyons, was a major benefactor to the fledgling College, donating his philosophical and theological library and various works of art. Pauline Jaricot, founder of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, donated 38,000 francs, an enormous sum in those days.
The bishop himself taught theology to the ecclesiastical students, who numbered six the first year. Upon his return from France, Portier rented a hotel next to the college grounds and started the first semester on May 1, 1830, with an enrollment of thirty students. On July 4 of the same year, the bishop laid the cornerstone of the first permanent building. It stood on the site of the present …