Midway University
Private Christian liberal arts university in Midway, Kentucky, United States
Midway University is a private Christian university in Midway, Kentucky, United States. Related by covenant to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), it enrolls approximately 2,000 students earning associate, bachelor's, and master's degrees. Midway began as an orphan school for female students in 1847 and over the decades evolved from a high school, to a junior college, and then a four-year women's college, the only one in Kentucky. The college became a university in July 2015 and in the fall of 2016 became fully coeducational.
History
Midway University was founded on October 3, 1849, as the Kentucky Female Orphan School with one teacher and sixteen female students. The nine members of the board of trustees oversaw the school's endowment, the building, and five acres of land.
Kentucky Female Orphan School (19th century)
The co-founders of the school were L.L. (Lewis Letig) Pinkerton, minister of the Midway Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) from 1844 to 1860, and James Ware Parrish, a Midway Christian Church elder. They obtained a charter on February 23, 1847, from the Kentucky legislature through the help of Kentucky Senator Major George W. Williams. Before the school was permitted to open, an endowment of twenty-five thousand dollars had to be secured and investments made. This time was used for soliciting funds, purchasing land, construction of a building, and drafting and outline of government and management for the school.
The public source identifies “Midway University” as private Christian liberal arts university in Midway, Kentucky, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Midway, University and Private.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14690940. Authority coordinates are 38.146, -84.679. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1847, 2015, 2016 and 1849.
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This entry incorporates text from “Midway 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.