Hollins University
private university in Hollins, Virginia
Hollins University is a private liberal arts university in Hollins, Virginia, United States. Founded in 1842 as Valley Union Seminary in the historical settlement of Botetourt Springs, it is one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the US.
Hollins enrolls about 800 undergraduate and graduate students. As Virginia's first chartered women's college, undergraduate programs are female-only. Men are admitted to the graduate-level programs.
History
The area where Hollins College developed was the site of Botetourt Springs. The area developed as a resort which operated from 1820 to 1841. It then became the site of a short-lived seminary, whose property and buildings were acquired by Valley Union Seminary.
1842–1855: Valley Union Seminary and Charles Lewis Cocke
The institution of higher learning that would become Hollins was first established in 1842 by the Reverend Joshua Bradley, a Baptist minister, as the coeducational Valley Union Seminary. Bradley left in 1845 for Missouri, and in 1846, the seminary's trustees hired a 25-year-old math instructor from Richmond named Charles Lewis Cocke to direct the institution. The same year, Cocke established the first school for enslaved people in the Roanoke area; many students at the school worked at the seminary.
The public source identifies “Hollins University” as private university in Hollins, Virginia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hollins, University and private.
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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 Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q12060410. VIAF identifies the subject as 159766535. The Library of Congress control number is no99027653. Authority coordinates are 37.355, -79.942. 2 of 9 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1842, 1820, 1841 and 1855.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hollins 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.