Belhaven University
Christian university in Jackson, Mississippi
Belhaven University (Belhaven or BU) is a private evangelical Christian university in Jackson, Mississippi, United States. Founded in 1883, the university offers traditional majors, programs of general studies, and pre-professional programs in Christian ministry, medicine, dentistry, law, and nursing.
History
In 1894, the college opened under the name "Belhaven College for Young Ladies" at its current location in Jackson, Mississippi on Peachtree Street in the historic Belhaven Neighborhood.
The school opened in the residence of Colonel Jones S. Hamilton, a Confederate veteran who became a millionaire after the war through investments in railroads run by convicts he leased. The school took the name Belhaven in honor of Hamilton's mansion, which was named after his ancestral home in Scotland.
It was established in 1883 from the merger of Mississippi Synodical College and McComb Female Institute. Dr. Lewis Fitzhugh was president.
J. R. Preston acquired the school and served as its president until it was destroyed by a fire in 1910. He went on to serve as superintendent of schools in Mississippi.
The public source identifies “Belhaven University” as christian university in Jackson, Mississippi. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Belhaven, University and Christian.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4882717. VIAF identifies the subject as 130528824. The Library of Congress control number is no2003013251. Authority coordinates are 32.320, -90.169. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1883, 1894 and 1910.
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This entry incorporates text from “Belhaven University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.