for its anti-slavery sentiment. Some members of the local community established the Neil's Creek Anti-Slavery Society in 1839 and the Neil's Creek Abolitionist Baptist Church in 1846. Neil's Creek was located about west of Lancaster, a major stop for fugitive slaves along the Underground Railroad route as they traveled north from Madison on the Ohio River to Indianapolis, Indiana. Several abolitionist families in the area, including some members of the school's board of trustees, were active participants in the Underground Railroad. The community's abolitionist church and anti-slavery sentiments also made Lancaster a good place to establish an integrated school. Eleutherian Institute admitted students without regard to ethnicity or gender, including freed and fugitive slaves. The institute's name comes from the Greek word eleutheros, meaning "freedom and equality". Its first classes began offering secondary school instruction on November 27, 1848, with fifteen students gathering in an old meetinghouse near Lancaster. Reverend John G. Craven, the son of Reverend Thomas Craven, served as the school's first teacher. John C. Thompson, Thomas Craven's son-in-law, served as a teacher for the first year, but he returned to Ohio when the school was unable to financially support two teachers. Reverend John Craven was principal of the school until 1861, then moved to Minnesota. James and Lucy Nelson maintained the school's dormitory in the days before the American Civil War. Reverend Thomas Craven donated the land for the school's campus at Lancaster, where two new building were erected atop College Hill in the 1850s, a dormitory, circa 1854, and the stone chapel and classroom building, which was constructed between 1854 and 1856. A log cabin on the property once served as John Craven's home, but no longer exists. In addition to donating land, Reverend Thomas Craven also solicited funds to support the school and recruited students to increase its enrollment. The institute was renamed Eleutherian College in 1854, when it began offering college-level coursework, making it the second college in the United States west of the Allegheny Mountains (Oberlin College was first) and the first in Indiana to provide interracial education. In the decade prior to the Civil War, African-American students comprised approximately one quarter to one third of its total enrollment, although enrollment of black students was never large. Some of its African-American students came from as far south as New Orleans, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi, but most of them came from Kentucky. The school's