Copyright Notice: This article is from the Encyclopedia of North Carolina edited by William S. Powell. Copyright © 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.

Photo of Concordia College dorm. It is a brick building in a wooded clearing.
Dormitory of Concordia College, Conover, N. C., ca 1906. Image courtesy of UNC Libraries.
Concordia College was established in Conover in 1877 as Concordia High School by the Lutherans of the Tennessee Synod. It was converted into a college in 1881. The college began as a ministerial training school, although by 1919 it also offered programs in French, "mental science," "moral science," and pedagogy. The Depression years brought a gradual decline in enrollment, which had peaked at slightly over 100. On 16 Apr. 1935 the school's administration building burned, and later that year the Lutheran Church voted to close the college.

Reference:

Gary R. Freeze, The Catawbans: Crafters of a North Carolina County, 1747-1900 (1995).

Additional Resources:

A timeline of North Carolina colleges and universities, 1865–1900. ANCHOR. https://www.ncpedia.org/anchor/timeline-north-carolina

Concordia College 1881-1935: https://www.stoppingpoints.com/north-carolina/sights.cgi?marker=Concordi...

Institutions of higher learning in North Carolina, NCDCR Digital Collections: https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Detail/institutions-of-higher-learning-in-north-carolina/1955726

Image Credit:

Dormitory of Concordia College, Conover, N. C., ca 1906. Image courtesy of UNC Libraries. Available from http://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/nc_post/id/4537 (accessed November 9, 2012).

Citation

Williams, Wiley J. "Concordia College." NCpedia. Encyclopedia of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press. Accessed on February 12th, 2025. https://www.ncpedia.org/concordia-college.