The colony selected the northwestern part of Allen County for a location, and started out with great expectations.

The site was chosen on account of the fertile prairie land around, as well as the heavy timber so close along the banks of the streams.

Plans having been made for so much building and so many families having promised to locate, the next thing was to erect a saw-mill.

Northrup that he should build a steam saw-mill, and that the colony should, in turn, give him 160 acres (0.65 km2) of good timber land and furnish him all the sawing he could do, and pay him $15 per thousand feet.

Not one-fourth of the projected colony of 300 families ever came, and those who did were rather poor, and through the lack of money and settlement the college was not built, though an academy afterward took its place.

The settlers from the first were an intelligent and enterprising class of people, who regarded the moral and mental culture of the young as one of the first things to be looked to, after opening their farms, therefore churches and schools were established.

This building was a frame structure two stories high, and the school had been established in 1866 under charge of the Neosho Presbytery.

It was expected that a railroad would be built through that part of the county, and when the town failed to secure it, it began to decline.