DeLand 
Stetson University began, fittingly for the Athens of Florida, in a room borrowed for learning. On November 5, 1883, Henry A. DeLand and Dr. John H. Griffith inaugurated the DeLand Academy in a lecture room of the town's First Baptist Church. It was the first private college in Florida, and it embodied the founder's conviction that education should come before nearly everything else.
The school's fortunes soon became entwined with one of America's most recognizable names. John B. Stetson — the Philadelphia hat manufacturer whose broad-brimmed "Boss of the Plains" defined the look of the American West — poured time and money into the young institution and served alongside DeLand as a founding trustee. After the academy was incorporated as DeLand University in 1887, its trustees changed the name in 1889 to John B. Stetson University in recognition of his generosity.
Today Stetson stands as Florida's oldest private university, and its DeLand Hall is honored as the oldest building in the state in continuous use for higher education. The campus's historic brick halls and live oaks remain the cultural heart of the city, a direct fulfillment of Henry DeLand's founding dream of a college at the center of town life.