On Jan. 6, 1853, Florida Governor Thomas Brown signed a bill that provided public support to higher education, and East Florida Seminary (EFS) in Ocala was one of the first schools to use this funding. The University of Florida traces its founding date to that year.

The school was closed during the Civil War, but in 1866 reopened in Gainesville, and later merged with the Florida Agricultural College, the state’s land-grant university. The other primary predecessor to the University of Florida was the Florida Agricultural College, established at Lake City in 1884 by Jordan Probst. The Florida Agricultural College became the first land-grant college in the state. In 1903, the Florida Legislature changed the name of Florida Agricultural College to the “University of Florida”