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<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-19/silliman-hall.webp" alt="Siliman Hall" loading="lazy" />
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(The Silliman Hall completed in 1903. 
 Being the only existing facility at that time, it held the school library, classroom, faculty and other essential rooms in one roof)
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The university was named after <a href="https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/2762/today-in-philippine-history-august-21-1901-the-thomasites-arrived-to-establish-a-new-public-school-system-switching-to-english-from-spanish" class="news_link">Dr. Horace Brinsmade Silliman</a>, a retired businessman and philanthropist from Cohoes, New York who provided the initial sum of $10,000 for the establishment of the school. Starting as an elementary school for boys, the school expanded to become a college in 1910, acquiring university status in 1938.
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The person tasked by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions to establish the school was Dr. David Sutherland Hibbard, a man from Lyndon, Kansas who, after serving as a pastor in a Presbyterian church in that locality, offered his services to the Presbyterian Board as missionary. 
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Upon his arrival in the Philippines, Hibbard was commissioned, with his wife Laura, to scout the southern part of the islands to determine the best location for the school. His original points of destination were Cebu, Zamboanga and Iloilo. 
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While in Cebu, a suggestion came to him to make a side-trip to Dumaguete. On his arrival, he was met by a Rev. Captain John Anthony Randolph, chaplain of the sixth U.S. Infantry Regiment stationed at that time in Dumaguete, who later introduced him to Don Meliton Larena, the town's local presidente and to his brother Demetrio Larena, then the vice-governor of the province. Hibbard got attracted to the place and decided to establish the school in the locality. He would later on write that the "beauty of Dumaguete and the friendliness of the people" helped in bringing about his decision.
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The institute had a modest beginning: Dr. and Mrs. Hibbard held classes in a rented house beside the sea until the institute's first building, the Silliman Hall, was completed in 1903. Recalling how the university started half a century later, Dr. Hibbard described:
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"There were fifteen boys that first morning. The equipment consisted of four desks about ten feet long, two tables and two chairs, a few McGuffey's Readers, a few geographies, arithmetics and ninth-grade grammars. I was President; Mrs. Hibbard was the faculty."
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Enrollment in the school grew attracting students from other Asian countries. In 1910, Silliman was awarded government recognition and the right to grant a degree. In the same year, it was incorporated under the laws of the Philippines.
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Women started to be admitted in 1912, Pura Blanco being its first female student.
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In 1921, the Silliman Bible School (later to become the Divinity School) was established in cooperation with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, largely representing the Congregational Churches of the United States. 
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As enrollment in the institution grew further, a corresponding increase in faculty followed. These developments were accompanied with the use of a more developed curriculum and the construction and acquisition of more permanent buildings and equipment. 
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By 1925, Silliman was already recognized as "the most influential Protestant institution of higher learning" in the Philippines, based on a report submitted by the Board of Educational Survey, which was created by the Philippine Legislature to conduct a study on all educational institutions in the country. The institute was re-incorporated in 1935, and in 1938 became the first school outside of Manila to be granted university status.
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August 28, 1901: Silliman University was established as Silliman Institute by American Protestant missionaries