Old Main occupies a site once known as Maple Grove, about two miles below the village of Guyandotte. It was a grassy knoll covered by a thick stand of virgin timber: oaks, maples, beeches, and poplars. Maple Grove was a fourth of a mile from the Ohio River, rising some eighty feet above the low water mark of the river. Below the knoll on the east side flowed a small, meandering stream that ran northward through a small ravine to the Ohio River near Holderby's Landing.
MOUNT HEBRON CHURCH
Marshall University started its rise from these humble beginnings in 1837 when a number of the local farmers decided that their children required a more fitting school building than the
old cabin at Maple Grove.
Perhaps as early as the 1820's the local farmers cleared some of the timber and
built on the crest of the knoll a crude, one-room log cabin, which they named
Mount Hebron Church.
They used the cabin for weekly worship services on Sunday. It was also used for a subscription
school, probably during the winter months when the children were not needed for farming.
© 2003, Special Collections, Marshall University
speccoll@marshall.edu