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Soon after granting its first bachelor's degree, the Nashville Normal and Theological Institute purchased Robert Gordon’s farm on Hillsboro Road and started a new campus in 1874-75. Vanderbilt University became the school’s neighbor on the west side of Hillsboro Road. In 1883 Nashville Normal incorporated as Roger Williams University. African Americans held faculty positions and served on the board of trustees. In 1886 Roger Williams expanded the curriculum to include a master’s degree program. Two mysterious fires destroyed the main building in 1905. |
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During the Civil War a white abolitionist named Dan Phillips came to Nashville intending to start a school for black preachers. By 1866, with the financial support of philanthropic Northerners, he started a school near Fisk University called the Nashville Normal and Theological Institute. The school moved several times and eventually fell under the sponsorship of the American Baptist Home Mission Society (a division of a Northern Baptist denomination). In 1874, while Vanderbilt University was under construction, Phillips raised $30,000 from one of his former classmates at Brown University and bought a 30-acre tract and three-story mansion on Nashville’s Hillsboro Road.