Oberlin School of Commerce Records

In 1845, F. G. Folsom began teaching classes in penmanship and bookkeeping in Oberlin. His classes provided a necessary service. His courses responded to the time's great demand for clerks and bank employees. As all important documents were hand-written, penmanship was a particularly valuable skill. Folsom's courses became the Commercial Business Institute, eventually the Oberlin School of Commerce. This institution held a similar relationship to the College as the Conservatory. Many Oberlin students took courses at the College and the Institute at the time, although the two would become less intertwined over time.

Folsom would be followed by penmen like Platt Rogers Spencer on his departure, famous for his Spencerian Writing System. During the Civil War, the scope of the Institute's courses would expand. Oberlin's Union Telegraphic Institute was consolidated with the Institute. It would be chartered as Calkin, Griffin & Co's Union Business Institute. Following the Civil War, the College and Institute would become increasingly separate. Promotion of the Institute's courses left the Oberlin course catalog after 1866.

Uriah McKee, teacher at the Institute, opened its business department in 1880. Around this time, the school would be renamed McKee's Oberlin Business College. The school expanded further in 1883. Its courses were modernized with the addition of shorthand and typewriting courses. John T. Henderson, a graduate of McKee's penmanship course, became co-principal in 1884 after buying half-interest in the school. When McKee's health failed in 1892, Henderson bought his share of the school and became its president. It would be housed in the Beckwith Building on the floor above the post office beginning in 1896. In 1914, it began to be partly housed in the Hobbs Building next door. In 1915, a teacher training program was launched at the Business College after accreditation by the State Department of Public Instruction.

The Oberlin Business College was renamed The Oberlin School of Commerce in 1928. The school then added a two-year course on business administration and lengthened its secretarial course to two years. In December of the same year, George L. Close, husband of Henderson's daughter Alice and secretary of the school, died in a car accident.

In August 1939, Henderson died at the age of 77. J.H. Kutscher, who began teaching in 1926, would become the school's new president. In 1949, students and alumni met for a formal dinner and dance to celebrate the School of Commerce's centennial year. The celebration was delayed by a year due to the war. It was the second-oldest business school in the country at the time. Speakers came from the first and third oldest schools, Iron City Business College in Cleveland and Dyke-Spencerian in Cleveland, to commemorate the occasion. The three areas of the School of Commerce in its 100th year were Technical Subjects (such as typewriting and shorthand), Economics, and Psychological aspects of business (salesmanship, advertising, public speaking).

In 1952, Kutscher retired as president. He sold his share of the school to Carl S. Tumbleson, owner of the Northwestern School of Commerce in Lima, Ohio. Kutscher remained as Educational Director until completely retiring a few years later. Tumbleson and his family ran the school until he died, and his son and daughter-in-law sold the school in 1965. Under the new owner, Joseph D. Rittenhouse, enrollment was very low. Rittenhouse attributed this to "competition from vocational schools." The Oberlin School of Commerce closed its doors in December 1973 with 20 enrolled students.