Discovering the lack of black preachers as a result, a handful of white men volunteered to join and assist. Among these volunteers was Rev. W.C. Graves, presiding elder of the Morristown District. Believing in a critical need for a school providing education for blacks beyond primary grades as well as preachers for black churches, Graves, along with the support of newly elected M.E. Church Bishop Henry W. Warren, decided the location held by Stearns and others was suitable. By 1881, Stearns and her pupils took possession of the church and school building, establishing Morristown Seminary. In October of the same year, Dr. Judson S. Hill, a 27-year-old pastor and missionary from Trenton, New Jersey, was asked by the bishop of the Holston Conference to turn the school into a full-fledged seminary and normal school to contribute teachers and ministers to East Tennessee's black communities. With the assistance of Nannie McGinley as part of the faculty, the path of the school was set into motion.