Ursinus College is a private liberal arts college in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1869 and occupies a 170-acre campus. History 19th century In 1867, members of the German Reformed Church began plans to establish a college where "young men could be liberally educated under the benign influence of Christianity." The founders hoped to establish an alternative to the seminary at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania (the present-day Lancaster Theological Seminary), a school they believed was increasingly heretical to traditional Reformed faith. Two years later, the college was granted a charter by the Legislature of Pennsylvania to begin operations on the grounds of Todd's School (founded 1832) and the adjacent Freeland Seminary (founded 1848). Dr. John Bomberger, served as the college's first president from 1869 until his death in 1890. Bomberger proposed naming the college after Zacharias Ursinus, a 16th-century German theologian and an important figure in the Protestant Reformation. In 1870, instruction began at the college in September; on October 4, the Zwinglian Literary Society was founded. For many years the annual opening meetings of "Zwing" and its rival society, Schaff, were the major events of the student year. Women were first admitted in 1881, as a direct consequence of the closing of the Pennsylvania Female College in 1880. A separate literary society for women, The Olevian, was formed in 1885. The town of Freeland was officially incorporated as the Borough of Collegeville in 1896. The Reading Railroad had named it that in 1869 — because of the Pennsylvania Female College; and not, as many believe, because of the then brand new Ursinus. However, in years since, the "college" in Collegeville has come to mean Ursinus. The Ruby, Ursinus' yearbook, was first published by the Class of 1897. The name was a tribute to Professor Samuel Vernon Ruby, who collapsed as he was entering Bomberger Hall in 1896 and died in its chapel, surrounded by students and teachers who had gathered there for morning prayers. 20th Century In 1921, the first aerial photograph of Ursinus was taken, by future college president D.L. Helfferich, and was published in the 1921 Ruby. J.D. Salinger enrolled at Ursinus for the 1938 fall semester and only spent one semester there before leaving."In 1938, Jerome D. Salinger, described as gallant and charming, came from New York City and lived in Ursinus’s Curtis Hall. He wrote a column in the student newspaper called “The Skipped Diploma,” but