Created by William White, Theodore Dehon, John Henry Hobart, the General Theological Seminary, founded in 1817, is the oldest Episcopal seminary in the United States. Classes began originally at St. Paul's Chapel before briefly moving to New Haven. Clement Clarke Moore, its first professor of biblical languages, donated the land that by 1827 the Seminary occupied. While it was the center of the Oxford Movement, which called for a return to High Anglican Traditions, the seminary began a new age of expansion in the late 19th century. Receiving permission to grant degrees in 1869, the Seminary expanded it physical campus and class size greatly under the leadership of Augustus Hoffman, a benefactor as well as a dean of the seminary. In 1972, the General Theological Seminary was the first American Episcopal Seminary to issue a statement supporting the ordination of women (who were first admitted as full time students in 1971.) The Seminary operates to this day and offers a multitude of religious instruction besides its three year master of divinity program.