For a number of years this academy was controlled by trustees appointed by the Bishop or by the Annual Conference, and enjoyed such supervision as the Bishop was able to give, which, with such arduous labors as demanded his energies, was of necessity but slight and occasional. On this account, and other accounts incident to the times, the control of the academy was lost to the Methodists, and went into the hands of the county authorities, which control never was regained by the Church. But it was kept up as an academy for many years, and at it many of the most prominent men of the county and counties adjacent were educated wholly or partly. In this way it did a good work for the people of its day, and was the forerunner and prophecy of another school not far away, which, under better auspices, though not without difficulties, has lived to bless the Church and the world in this nineteenth century. The first regularly incorporated Methodist college in the United States was Cokesbury College. It was located near Baltimore, Md. It was in operation only a few years. Augusta College, Kentucky, was the next. That has long since ceased to exist. In the period preceding the division of the Methodist Episcopal Church, there were thirty-one literary institutions controlled by this Church, of which three were exclusively for females and several, co-educational. Seventeen of these were located in the Southern States. Of the thirty-one, only seven colleges have survived, viz.: Randolph-Macon College, chartered February 3, 1830; Wesleyan University (Connecticut), chartered May, 1831; Emory College (Georgia), 1837; Emory and Henry (Virginia), 1838; Wesleyan Female College (Georgia), 1839. Dickinson College (Pennsylvania) chartered in 1783, but did not become a Methodist college till 1833, and was opened as a Methodist college September, 1834. Alleghany College (Pennsylvania) was chartered in 1818, and came under the control of the Methodist Church in 1833, and was opened as a Methodist college the same year. It will thus be seen that all these male colleges which survived, were opened under Methodist patronage, nearly simultaneously, viz.: Wesleyan University, October, 1831; Randolph-Macon, January, 1832; Alleghany College, November, 1833; Dickinson College, September, 1834. This point of time thus became a marked starting-point in the history of Methodist colleges. Since this turning-point was passed, the number of them has increased as rapidly as the membership of the church, and can now be counted by the hundreds, making the Methodist Church foremost in the great work of Christian education. It may be noted here that all of the above-named colleges succeeded to buildings which had been used for school purposes, more or less complete, while those of Randolph-Macon were built wholly out of new material.