The university was founded by Utica financier Nicholas Devereux, one of the first to gain land grants in newly surveyed Cattaraugus County from the
Holland Land Company. Devereux founded the town of Allegany on the grant, hoping to build a new city.
A great city needed religious instruction, so Devereux approached John Timon, the bishop of Buffalo, for assistance. The two invited the Franciscan order to Western New York, and a small group under Father
Pamfilo da Magliano OFM arrived in 1856. This was the first group of Franciscan brothers to settle in the United States. The school graduated its first class in 1858.The largest dormitory on campus, the infamous Devereux Hall, is named for the founder.Once one of the nation's most prominent Catholic colleges, St. Bonaventure lost some of its reputation during the 1980s and
1990s. While the nation's top Catholic schools like Notre Dame and Georgetown foresaw trends in college finance and enrollment,
expanding programs and fundraising, St. Bonaventure atrophied. Its financial problems were exacerbated until the point when it
almost declared bankruptcy in 1994. The Board of Trustees made a number of changes that saved the university, most notably hiring
a lay president, which would later have disasterous consequences.Thomas Merton taught English at St. Bonaventure for a year just at the
start of World War II. It was at the school that Merton finally gave into
his vocation and decided to join the Trappists. He entered the monastery in Kentucky in 1941. An usual
botanical phenomenon on a mountain in view of campus, where the trees have fallen and left a clearing in the shape of a heart, is
linked to Merton in campus myth. Students call it "Merton's Heart" and say Merton went there to play.St. Bonaventure's College was granted university status by New York State in 1967.St. Bonaventure is strongly identified with the Western New York
region and with the small city of Olean. A
notable proportion of the student body are from the Buffalo and Rochester metro areas, and references to Buffalo and
Rochester -- and their Catholic high schools -- are common even among students not from those
areas.