Benedict College is a historically black, liberal arts college located in Columbia, South Carolina. Founded in 1870 by northern Baptists, it was originally a teachers' college. It has since expanded into a four-year college. Benedict College was founded in 1870 on a 110-acre (0.45 km) plantation in Columbia, South Carolina. Under the auspices of the American Baptist Home Mission Society, Mrs. Bathsheba A. Benedict of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, provided the amount of $13,000.00 to purchase the land to open Benedict Institute on December 12, 1870. This new school was established for the recently emancipated people of African descent. Benedict's first class consisted of ten recently emancipated people of African descent and one teacher, the Reverend Timothy L. Dodge, D.D. He was a college-trained preacher from the North, who became president of the Institute. Benedict Institute set out from humble beginnings in a dilapidated former slave master's mansion to prepare men and women to be "powers for good in society". The dilapidated mansion, built in 1839, served as the first schoolhouse where grammar school subjects, along with Bible and theology, were taught.