Allegheny College

Allegheny College is a private liberal arts college in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1815, Allegheny is the oldest college in continuous existence under the same name west of the Allegheny Mountains. It is a member of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Presidents' Athletic Conference, and it is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. History Pre-colonial history The area where Allegheny College stands was the ancestral land of the Eriechronon people until the Iroquois Confederacy forced them out. Having been displaced from their ancestral lands in what is now Eastern Pennsylvania, the Lenape or Delaware Tribe moved into the now unoccupied region. They formed an alliance with the neighboring Seneca, one of the five tribes that made up the Iroquois Confederacy, and other displaced Lenape. Under the leadership of Chief Custalog, they founded the settlement of Cussewago. This settlement would later be abandoned and claimed by David Mead to become Meadville, Pennsylvania, on May 12, 1788. Early history Allegheny College was founded in April 1815 by the Reverend Timothy Alden, a graduate of Harvard's School of Divinity. The college has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1833 but does not integrate religion into the classroom or pedagogy.