literary institution for the education of young men – especially those desiring to enter the ministry. Consequently, his small log cabin with its wax-paper windows and crude log benches was converted into the first “Latin School” west of the Alleghenies. The founding of Jefferson College, today Washington & Jefferson College, the Western Theological Seminary and the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, each trace its beginnings to this humble log cabin – now a shrine preserved in part by Phi Gamma Delta. With increasing enrollment, the little school needed a suitable and permanent building. Two places were proposed: (1) the site of the log cabin, which was a short distance from Canonsburg, and (2) Canonsburg itself. Canonsburg was the location that was chosen. Colonel John Canon, for whom the town was named, donated a choice plot of land, and supplied much of the money for the founding of the Canonsburg Academy in 1791. Many contributions were made by the Presbyterians of the West, including lace, grain and tea. The school was chartered by the Pennsylvania legislature in 1794 under the name “The When Phi Gamma Delta was Academy and Library Company of Canonsburg.” Patrick founded in 1848, Jefferson Henry and Benjamin Franklin were among the library’s early College boasted 207 contributors. The Academy became Jefferson College in 1802. students and 10 professors. When Phi Gamma Delta was founded in 1848, Jefferson This made it one of the College boasted 207 students and ten professors. This made it largest institutions in the one of the largest institutions in the United States. United States.
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Washington College was only seven miles from Canonsburg, its development having paralleled that of Jefferson. A Presbyterian project, Washington College received its charter from the state in 1806. Declining enrollments at both Jefferson College and Washington College led to their merger as Washington & Jefferson College in 1869.
The Log Cabin While difficult to decipher whether tales about our Founders creating the original plans for Phi Gamma Delta in the Log Cabin are truth or lore, they did visit the site. The names of John Templeton McCarty and Naaman Fletcher, two of the six Founders, were even carved on its door. When the Log Cabin was in danger of being destroyed in 1895, it was moved by Dr. W. F. Brown, a minister, from the M’Millan farm to the old Jefferson College. The Chicago Ekklesia of 1907 suggested the preservation of the cabin as a memorial to the Founders of Phi Gamma Delta. Since that time, it has been in the custody of the Fraternity. It stands today on the
The Log Cabin: Phi Gamma Delta has partial custody (since 1908) of the Log Cabin which housed a classical and theological school at Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, where Jefferson College was located at the time of our founding in 1848. The cabin now sits on the campus of a junior high school. In recent years, it was dismantled and reassembled as part of a preservation effort. 55