Warren County settlers had scarcely broken the prairie sod and built their first rude dwellings when they started planning to educate their children. They wanted more than an ungraded elementary school. They wanted a high school and maybe even a college.

In 1860 plans started for the Indianola Male and Female Seminary. Supporters committed $1,800 ($67,000 today). It was a courageous undertaking for a frontier town, but Indianola had a secret plan for success. They would get the support of the Methodist Church. The church eventually agreed to back the idea, as long as a building worth at least $3,000 was built to house the new seminary.

The building wasn’t finished when the Seminary opened in September, using a variety of rented buildings and rooms on the square. Tuition ranged from $3 to $8.

Three months after opening, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States and by April of 1861 the United States was at war with itself in the Civil War. Most able-bodied men left to fight, either in an infantry unit led by Paris P. Henderson or a calvary unit led by P. Gad Bryan.

But the academy and the community continued to grow.  With a donation of land and $4,350 in pledges a structure was built and called Bluebird because of the lead-colored paint on its brick exterior. While destroyed during a May 1871 storm, a boulder near the sidewalk at the center of campus commemorates Old Bluebird’s existence.

In 1867, two years after the war ended, Indianola’s seminary was raised to the level of a college and re-named Simpson Centenary College, in honor of Matthew Simpson, a Methodist bishop and advisor to President Lincoln.  By 1885 it had become simply Simpson College – simply a dream come true for Indianola and Warren County.