The College opened on May 1, 1829, with four students under the guidance of Rev. John Monteith. At the start of the next year, the Rev. George Junkin, a Presbyterian minister, was elected first official president of the college. He moved the all-male Manual Labor Academy of Pennsylvania from Germantown (near Philadelphia) to Easton. Classes began on May 9, 1832, with instruction of 43 students in a rented farmhouse on the south bank of the Lehigh River. Junkin supported colonization of Liberia by ex-slaves from the United States. He proposed Lafayette for educating free African Americans for missionary work in the new American colony established by the American Colonization Society. Between 1832 and 1844, ten black students were enrolled at Lafayette, four of whom later served as missionaries in Liberia. Most African Americans, however, wanted to gain their legal rights in the United States, for many their homeland for generations.