The
divinity school was founded by the Free Will Baptists in
Parsonsfield, Maine in 1840 as a library department and graduate bible school of the
Parsonsfield Seminary with
Moses Smart serving as the first leader of the school. From 1842 to 1844, the divinity school was located in
Dracut,
Massachusetts. In 1844, the divinity school moved again to
Whitestown,
New York and became part of the
Whitestown Seminary, where it was known as the Free Baptist Biblical School. From 1854 to 1870, the divinity school was located in
New Hampton, New Hampshire, and affiliated with the
New Hampton Institute. The school and its library were removed to Lewiston in 1870 and became a graduate school (known as Bates Theological Seminary until 1888) of Bates College. In 1888, it was renamed Cobb Divinity School in honor of Jonathan Leavitt Haskell Cobb (1824-1897), a prominent businessman at the
Bates Mill in Lewiston who had donated $25,000 to the Divinity School at Bates. Cobb Divinity School was disbanded in 1908, with much of its curricula and faculty and library becoming the Bates College Religion Department. In 1911, the Northern Free Will Baptist Conference merged with the
Northern Baptist Convention (a former name of the
American Baptist Churches USA). Bates remained nominally affiliated with the Baptist tradition until 1970 when the college catalogue no longer described the school as a "Christian college". ==Images==