Macon Homes Guide

Schools and Education

The Macon area is home to the first women’s college in the world. On December 23, 1836, the institution now known as Wesleyan College was founded as “Georgia Female College”. A group of Macon citizens had pledged $9,000 for the purchase of a five acre site along the river halfway between downtown and nearby Vineville to establish a college “to burst the shackles of ignorance and superstition which had bound woman for three thousand years.” The liberal arts school was formed under the authority both of the state of Georgia and the Methodist Conference. The first ever sororities were founded at Wesleyan in 1851 and 1852. Both of the sororities founded at Wesleyan continue in existence as national organizations, though Wesleyan abolished the presence of sororities on its campus in 1917. In 1928, the school moved to a larger site six miles away in the town of Rivoli.

Mercer University, the world’s second largest Baptist university, was founded in Penfield, Georgia in 1833 and moved to Macon in 1871, thanks to significant inducements from the local business community. It now also maintains a campus in Atlanta. Between the two campuses, the university maintains a student population of approximately 7000, and offers a remarkably diverse array of areas of study for a university of its size: liberal arts, business, education, engineering, law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and theology. The programs in medicine and engineering have an especially notable impact on the local economy, supplying doctors to rural Georgia and keeping healthcare and medical research strong in central Georgia, and supplying trained engineers for the “Aerospace Alley” technical businesses that have located to the area to do business with Robins Air Force Base.