Palmer College was founded in DeFuniak Springs in 1907. The State of Florida had established a Normal School (from the French ecole normale) for training teachers in 1887. In 1907, the State of Florida consolidated the state colleges into three campuses and closed the DeFuniak Normal School. The Florida Presbytery purchased the school building, Harriet Saunders McIlwain Hall (above), and opened Palmer College. The college operated until 1935, offering both college and high school (or Academy) classes and graduated many future leaders of the the state.
At the beginning, Palmer College was a full four-year school but, towards the end of the period, the college classes were confimed to the Freshman and Sophomore years, making Palmer College the first Junior College in the state and one of the earliest in the country. The photo below is the Young Men’s Dormitory, which still exists today as the Palmer House Apartments on College Avenue.
[Accession No. 2007-2-3; Donated by Ann Williams]
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