Establishment The Clinton Liberal Institute was the initial educational venture of the Universalist denomination in America.{{cite book No record survives explaining why Clinton was chosen, but the school's 1878 catalog offered this explanation: "[the] climate is agreeable and healthful; the citizens are intelligent, moral, and hospitable, and are deeply interested in the intellectual culture of the young. The village is exceptionally free from the vices and temptations that abound in most towns and cities. The general quiet of the place and its prevailing intellectual and moral tone are highly favorable to study and the development of true character."{{citation
Operation . The original building of the Institute, located on eight acres at the southeast corner of Utica and Mulberry Streets, where male students boarded, was four stories tall (plus a basement), with a base 96 by 52 feet, built of gray stone. It cost $9,300 to build () and was the largest building in Clinton. A separate wooden building for classes for women, who boarded with families, was two stories tall, and 40 by 25 feet. During the first year there were 108 students.{{cite book The Ladies' Department was located 0.8 miles (1.25 km) away from the men's department, at Chestnut and William Streets, "pleasantly situated at the head of one of the main streets of the village, commanding a view of the whole street and West Park Row, in fact overlooking the entire village." The Ladies' Department had eight pianos.{{cite news Both male and female students had free access to the Astronomical Observatory at
Hamilton College.{{cite book In 1839, a call for funds to retire debt stated that 1,000 youth of both sexes had been taught by the Institute.{{cite news In 1845, after much discussion within the Universalist Church about establishing a
seminary in the state of New York, Reverend
Thomas J. Sawyer—a leading proponent of such an establishment—took charge of the Clinton Liberal Institute. He set aside two hours per day to lecture on
theology to any students who wanted to attend, at no cost to the students. He continued to offer this additional instruction until the fall of 1853, by which time efforts were underway to open a Universalist seminary elsewhere in New York. Sawyer prepared a total of 37 students to enter the ministry during this period. According to Cunningham, in his
History of Oneida County, "This institution had somewhat of a checkered career, and finally, in 1879, was removed to Fort Plain." The checkered career was the institute's precarious financial status, which threatened its survival: "through a long period the life of the school was an incessant struggle with floating debts and inadequate resources.... Repeatedly—almost periodically during its first years and not rarely later—it encountered financial storms that seemed certain to overwhelm it." The move to Fort Plain reflected the deterioration of the original buildings (the stone of the main building was later used in the construction of Carnegie Hall, on the Hamilton College campus, which opened in 1904).
Fort Plain, New York is in
Montgomery County. Still named the Clinton Liberal Institute, it occupied in Fort Plain the facilities of the former Fort Plain Female Seminary and Collegiate Institute.{{cite book ==Associated individuals==