The Seminary began as the
Normal School of
Upland, established and built by the president of the board of directors of the
American Baptist Publication Society, John Price Crozer. After the outbreak of the
American Civil War, the school was closed. Crozer allowed the
Union army to use the building as a hospital during the Civil War. The hospital contained a thousand beds and accommodated 300 nurses, attendants and guards. The patients were almost exclusively Union soldiers except for after the
battle of Gettysburg, in July 1863, when the number of wounded and sick
Confederate army soldiers left on the battlefield required their acceptance at the hospital. During the war, more than 6,000 patients were treated. Many of the dead from the hospital were some of the first burials at nearby
Chester Rural Cemetery. After the war, the building was repossessed by Crozer and subsequently sold to Colonel Theodore Hyatt for use as the
Pennsylvania Military Academy until 1868. Crozer died in 1866. When Old Main was vacated by the Pennsylvania Military Academy his family converted the school to the Crozer Theological Seminary in his honor. His son recruited faculty for the new mission, It served as an
American Baptist Church school, training seminarians for entry into the
Baptist ministry from 1868 to 1970. Henry G. Watson was named its first President in 1869. In 1970 the school moved to
Rochester, New York, in a merger that formed the
Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. The old seminary building was used as the former Crozer Hospital (now the Crozer-Chester Medical Center). The building is currently used as administrative offices for the
Crozer-Chester Medical Center. ==Campus==