As a "college of opportunity," Brevard College was formed in 1934 through the merger of two Methodist colleges, Rutherford and Weaver, on a campus donated by the Brevard Institute, the present location of the College today. From the beginning, the purpose of all three schools was to give young men and women in the mountains of western North Carolina an opportunity for an education, to help them make "not a mere 'living,' but a 'life.' " Students with limited financial resources paid for their education through campus jobs. Costs were kept low, the schools spending only what was necessary to exist. The institution's history begins in 1853 in Owl Hollow School, a one-room log cabin in the foothills of Burke County, under the leadership of The Reverend Laban Abernathy, a Methodist minister. The Brevard College tradition that "None Shall Ever Be Turned Away for Want of Means" was the principle established by Reverend Abernathy. His school developed into Rutherford College and was later acquired in 1900 by the Western North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. A great number of men were trained for the ministry at Rutherford, and the school became known as the "School of the Prophets." Believing in "the thorough development of all the powers of the student with such direction as to lead up to the highest type of Christian manhood and womanhood," Rutherford College offered coeducational classes.