Case Western Reserve University

Reserve College and Preparatory School by the Presbyterian Church. Western Reserve College, or "Reserve" as it was popularly called, was the first college in northern Ohio. The school was called "Yale of the West"; its campus, now that of the Western Reserve Academy, imitated that of Yale. It had the same motto, "Lux et Veritas" (Light and Truth), the same entrance standards, and nearly the same curriculum. It was different from Yale in that it was a manual labor college, in which students were required to perform manual labor, seen as psychologically beneficial.
Western Reserve College's founders sought to instill in students an "evangelical ethos" and train Christian ministers for Ohio, where there was an acute shortage of them. The college was located in Hudson because the town made the largest financial offer to help in its construction. That town, about 30 miles southeast of Cleveland, had been an antislavery center from the beginning: its founder, David Hudson, was against slavery, and founding trustee …