In 1793, Presbyterian minister Rev. Samuel Kirkland founded Hamilton-Oneida Academy as a seminary to serve as part of his missionary work with the Oneida tribe. The seminary admitted both white and Oneida boys. Kirkland named it in honor of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, who was a member of the first Board of Trustees of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy. The Academy became Hamilton College in 1812, making it the third oldest college in New York after Columbia and Union, after it expanded to a four-year college curriculum.