The ambition of the town’s mercantile and professional classes to enhance Lexington’s cultural growth motivated them to encourage the trustees of Transylvania Seminary to move the school from Danville to Lexington.  So in 1789 the school began its operation south of the town.   When the town leaders purchased a more favorable spot north of the town, now Gratz Park, and offered it to Transylvania, the school moved to this new location permanently in 1793. 

The only cloud on the horizon of this educational endeavor was the persistent attempt of the Presbyterians to achieve control over the school.  When they failed to do so they founded their own school in the 1 790s called Kentucky Academy and located it adjacent to the Pisgah Presbyterian Church.  However, with the departure of a controversial president named Harry Toulmin from Transylvania, the boards of both schools wisely decided to pool their resources and united under the new name of Transylvania University, located on the Lexington site.  What is notable about this new university was the establishment of law and medical departments.  These were some of the earliest such departments in the nation, and certainly the first in the West. 

One figure central to the partnership between Lexington and Transylvania was Henry Clay.  This Virginia-born and trained lawyer traveled to Lexington early in his career in 1797 because he saw a brighter future for himself here than if he had remained in Virginia.  He quickly became a leading lawyer because of his legal and oratorical abilities, and was soon propelled into politics, quickly becoming a rising star in the U.S.  Congress.  He was appointed a law professor in Transylvania’s budding law department in 1805 where he taught for only two years, but was elected a university trustee, a position he held for the rest of his life.  He and other trustees invited the Rev. Horace Holley to leave his successful career in Boston as a Unitarian minister and a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College.  When Holley visited Lexington in 1818, Clay was his host and was influential in persuading Holley to accept the post. 
Holley wrote to his wife, Mary Austin Holley, who was not at all enthusiastic about the idea of abandoning Boston for the uncouth frontier: The town is handsomer than I expected, and has a more comfortable and genteel aspect.  It has not the pretension without the reality that so many of the small towns have through which I have passed.  .  .  .   There can be no doubt that it is my duty as a philanthropist to accept the station which is offered to me here. I believe it is in my power to do more good in this region than in any other at this moment.  I had rather be at the head of this institution than at the head of an Eastern college.  The field is wider, the harvest more abundant, and the grain of a most excellent quality. 

Under his leadership Transylvania became a university of national note.  He recruited some of the most respected persons in the fields of law, medicine, and natural sciences to come to Lexington.