Transcribed from microfilm and contributed by: Charles A. Sherrill, 1992
A project of the Bradley County Historical Society

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Year 1865, Petition Number 5_

[no cover sheet]

Senate & House of Representatives of the State of Tennessee

Your petitioners of Bradley County and East Tennessee generally respectfully represent to your Honorable bodies that on the 8th day of June 1865 that the Legislature of the state of Tennessee granted a Charter to the East Tennessee Female College to be located at Cleveland Tennessee and Trustees were therein appointed and for all the terms and stipulations of said Charter reference is made to the same in the Acts of 1865 Chapter 18 from Sections 1 to 17.

Your petitioners further represent and state that a better location for a Female College cannot be found any where than that of Cleveland in Bradley County Tennessee. It is immediately on the East Tennessee & Georgia Rail Road, and accessible from any part of the United States. The water is fine and healthy and society good. Besides the large majority of the people not only of Cleveland and Bradley County but of all East Tennessee is, and always has been loyal to the Goverment of the United States.

East Tennessee wants and deserves a Number One Female College, and Capt. A. E. Blount who is in every way qualified will take charge of it as principal.

We therefore humbly ask your honorable bodys to make an appropriation or loan of One Hundred Thousand Dollars for the purpose of purchasing the Ground upon which to locate said College, and for the purpose of building it and furnishing it and preparing it for the purposes intended to wit for a Number One Female College, and in doing so, we desire that the state have a lien on the land, buildings, and furniture of said College for the amount so app[ropri]ated or loaned until the same is refunded back.

And we desire the amount so appropriated or loaned to be placed in the hands of said Trustees or their President for the purpose of completing said College as is intended. We cannot too forcibly show the great importance of Education and especially of Female education. You are well apprised of its importance. A donation or loan cannot be granted for a more laudable and praisworthy purpose, and feeling so much confidence in our cause, and believing that our most earnest petition will be granted, we humbly ask that it be done.

Names of Petitioners