The Willoughby University of Lake Erie, the forerunner of the Willoughby Medical College of Columbus, was chartered on March 3, 1834.  It was located nineteen miles east of Cleveland near the Chagrin River in what is now Willoughby.  The college trustees decided to move the University to Columbus in 1847.  This decision followed several years of competition for students with another medical school in northeastern Ohio--the Medical Department of Western Reserve College, founded in 1843.  Another factor in the decision to move was a poor relationship that developed with the townspeople of Willoughby following the school's alleged involvement in an 1843 grave-robbing incident.

On Jan. 14, 1847, the state legislature passed an amendment to the 1834 charter of the Willoughby University of Lake Erie, authorizing its transfer to Columbus as the "Willoughby Medical College of Columbus." Noah H. Swayne, one of Ohio's most famous jurists and a future U.S. Supreme Court justice under President Lincoln, was named President of the College.  John H. Butterfield, M.D., who had been with the school in Willoughby, was made Dean.  Besides Mr. Swayne, the members of the Board of Trustees of the relocated college included many prominent citizens of Columbus--John W. Andrews, William Armstrong, William Dennison, Jr., John Field, Samuel Medary, Robert Neil, Aaron F. Perry, S. D. Preston, Dr. C. F. Schenck, Alfred P. Stone, Joseph Sullivant, William S. Sullivant, Joseph R. Swan and Charles H. Wing.  To these farsighted individuals goes the credit for establishing the country's first department of psychiatry.