Spring Hill College was founded by the first bishop of Mobile, Michael Portier. After purchasing a site for the College on a
hill near Mobile, Bishop Portier went to France to find teachers and funds for the new college. Upon his return he rented a hotel
next to the college grounds and started the first semester on May 1, 1830, with an enrollment of thirty students. On July 4 of the same year the bishop laid the cornerstone of the
first permanent building. It stood on the site of the present Administration Building and opened for classes in November 1831.
Spring Hill thus takes its place among the oldest colleges in the South. It is the third oldest Jesuit college in the United
States.In 1836 the governor of Alabama, Clement C. Clay, signed a
legislative act which chartered the College and gave it "full power to grant or confer such degree or degrees in the arts and
sciences, or in any art or science as are usually granted or conferred by other seminaries of learning in the United States."
This power was used in the following year, 1837, when four graduates received their degrees. The first two presidents of the
College were called away to be bishops, one to Dubuque, Iowa (Bishop Mathias Loras), the other to Vincennes, Indiana (Bishop John Stephen
Bazin), and the third, Father Mauvernay, died after a brief term of office. Bishop Portier then found it necessary to
transfer the College, first to the French Congregation of the Fathers of Mercy, and next to the Congregation of
Eudists, both of whom lacked teaching and administrative experience. He then persuaded the Fathers of the Lyonnais Province of the Society of
Jesus to take possession of the College. The new regime was inaugurated with Father Francis Gautrelet, S.J., as
president in September 1847. Since that time the institution has continued under Jesuit direction.Instruction at the College was not interrupted by the American
Civil War, but in 1869 a fire destroyed the main building and required the removal of students and faculty to St. Charles College,
Grand Coteau, Louisiana. Bishop John Quinlan and
other benefactors assisted in rebuilding the College, which reopened at Spring Hill before the year's end.As the enrollment increased, Quinlan Hall, the College Chapel, the Thomas Byrne Memorial Library, and Mobile Hall were
erected. In 1935, the high school, which had been a unit distinct from the College since 1923, was discontinued. In the space
vacated by the high school, the Jesuit House of Studies was opened in 1937, and the Scholasticate of the Sacred Heart opened on a
site adjoining the College a few years later. After World War II, a great
influx of veterans taxed the facilities of the College, requiring the erection of a number of temporary buildings on the campus.
At the request of His Excellency, Archbishop Thomas Joseph Toolen of Mobile, the College became co-educational in 1952. At present the ratio of male to female students is approximately 1:2. Black
students were accepted into all departments of the College for the first time in 1954, before desegregation was mandated by the United States government.