1909-1919
Before the University of Florida was established, Kingsbury Academy, located in Ocala, Fla. was acquired by the state and renamed East Florida Seminary in 1853. After the Civil War, the seminary moved to Gainesville and was consolidated with the state’s land-grant Florida Agricultural College, based in Lake City, to become the University of the State of Florida in 1905, later renamed the University of Florida in 1909. Classes began on September 16, 1906 with the admission of 102 white male students.
The University of the State of Florida was established by the Legislature on June 5, 1905 under what was popularly known as the Buckman Act. The law outlined the university’s academic departments and allowed for “such other departments as may from time to time be determined upon and added at any joint meeting of the State Board of Education with the said Board of Control.” The law also specified that the university would admit only white males.
The State Board of Education met jointly with the Board of Control in Tallahassee early in June, 1909, and passed a resolution authorizing the Board of Control to establish a college of law in the University of Florida. Pursuant to that resolution, the Board of Control met in the city of Jacksonville in June, 1909, and provided for the University of Florida College of Law, which, “by the quality of its work and character of its equipment, would merit and command the confidence and support of the bench and bar of the State and would draw within its walls the young men who will constitute the future bar of Florida.”
Nathan Philemon Bryan served as chairman of the Board of Control during this period. He was a Florida native, had earned an A.B. from Emory in 1893, a law degree in 1895 from Washington and Lee, and was admitted to The Florida Bar the same year. Referred to as the “father of the law school,” Bryan took an active role in securing the law school for the university, and remained involved while he was a U.S. Senator, and judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Judicial Circuit.