List of Colonial Colleges

Engraving of Harvard College by Paul Revere, 1767

The Colonial Colleges are nine institutions of higher education chartered in the American Colonies before the United States of America became a sovereign nation after the American Revolution. These nine have long been considered together, notably in the survey of their origins in the 1907 The Cambridge History of English and American Literature.^[1] Seven of the nine colonial colleges are part of the Ivy League athletic conference: Harvard, Yale, Penn, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, and Dartmouth. (The eighth member of the Ivy League, Cornell University, was founded in 1865.)

The two colonial colleges not in the Ivy League are now both public universities—The College of William & Mary (in the Colonial Athletic Association) and Rutgers University, the state university of New Jersey (in the Big East Conference). William & Mary was a private institution from 1693 until just after the American Civil War, when it received some support from the state. It became public in 1906. Rutgers became the State University of New Jersey after World War II.

The nine Colonial Colleges

Institution (present name, where different)	Colony	Founded	Chartered	First instruction, degrees	Primary religious influence	Ivy League
New College[nb 1] (Harvard University)	Massachusetts Bay Colony	1636	1650	1642	Puritan	Yes
The College of William & Mary	Colony and Dominion of Virginia	1693[nb 2]	1693		Church of England[nb 3]	No
Collegiate School (Yale University)	Connecticut Colony	1701	1701		Puritan (Congregational)	Yes
Academy of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania)	Province of Pennsylvania	1740[nb 4]	1755	1751	Church of England but officially nonsectarian[8][nb 5]	Yes
College of New Jersey (Princeton University)	Province of New Jersey	1746	1746	1747	Presbyterian but officially nonsectarian	Yes
King's College (Columbia University in the City of New York)	Province of New York	1754	1754		Church of England with a policy of commitment to "religious liberty."[13]	Yes
Rhode Island College[14] (chartered as the College or University in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in New England, in America[15]) (Brown University)	Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations	1764	1764		Baptist (no religious requirement for admissions)[nb 6]	Yes
Queen's College (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)	Province of New Jersey	1766	1766	1771	Dutch Reformed	No
Dartmouth College	Province of New Hampshire	1769	1769	1768, 1771[nb 7]	Puritan (Congregational)	Yes

Other colonial-era foundations

Several other colleges and universities can be traced to colonial-era "academies" or "schools", but are not considered Colonial Colleges because they were not chartered as formal colleges with degree-granting powers until after the formation of the United States of America in 1776.

Institution (present name, where different)	Colony/State	Founded	Chartered	Religious Influence
Henricus Colledge, 1611 Citie of Henricus (Henricus Colledge 1619)	Colony of Virginia	1625	1619	puritan-Anglican
King William's School, Annapolis (St. John's College)	Province of Maryland	1696	1784	Non-sectarian
Bethlehem Female Seminary (Moravian College)	Province of Pennsylvania	1742	1863	Moravian Church
Free School (University of Delaware)	Delaware Colony	1743	1833	Non-sectarian
Augusta Academy (Washington and Lee University)	Colony and Dominion of Virginia	1749	1782	Non-sectarian
College of Charleston	Province of South Carolina	1770	1785	Church of England
Little Girls' School (Salem College)	Province of North Carolina	1772	1866	Moravian Church
Dickinson College	Province of Pennsylvania	1773	1783	Presbyterian
Hampden-Sydney College	Colony and Dominion of Virginia	1775	1783	Presbyterian
Union College	State of New York	1779	1795	Non-sectarian
Transylvania University	Commonwealth of Virginia[nb 8]	1780	1780	Disciples of Christ
John McMillan's Log School (Washington & Jefferson College)	Commonwealth of Pennsylvania	1780[18]	1787	Presbyterian
The College on The Chester (Washington College)	State of Maryland	1782	1782	Non-sectarian

See also

	University portal
	United States portal
	North America portal
	British Empire portal

• First university in the United States

Notes

1. ^ The institution was founded in 1636 by a vote of the legislature of the colony to provide money for "a school or college" at Newtowne (the present Cambridge.) Nothing further was done about actually creating a school until 1638, when in his will John Harvard bequeathed money and books to the yet-uncreated college. Construction began shortly thereafter on a school that was given the name of its first benefactor.
2. ^ The College of William & Mary sometimes asserts a connection with an attempt to found a "University of Henrico" at Henricopolis (also known as Henricus) in the Colony of Virginia, which received a charter in 1618; but only a small school for Native Americans had begun operation by 1622, when the town was destroyed in a Native American raid. A page on their website says "The College of William & Mary [...] was the first college planned for the United States. Its roots go back to the College proposed at Henrico in 1619." However, it immediately proceeds to note that "The College is second only to Harvard University in actual operation."^[2] Since William & Mary describes itself as "America's second-oldest college" and gives its year of founding as 1693, it does not seem to be suggesting institutional continuity with the University of Henrico, rather, W&M is providing historical perspective. However, this depends upon the orientation and competitiveness of the administration at any given time, for instance, when a Harvard grad is President, Wm & M is presented as "second college", but when Va grad is president, it is "the first college in its roots". (This original college has been revived , in 1992, as "Henricus Colledge (1619), America's 1st College."^[3]. William & Mary has a published list of its early graduates by its Swem Library.
3. ^ In the wake of the American Civil War, the College ceased to enroll students in 1882 due to attendant financial pressures. Students returned in 1888 after the Commonwealth of Virginia authorized $10,000 for it to become a "State normal" school for men. In 1906 it became a public, non-sectarian school with the college's royal charter still in effect, except were superseded by state or federal laws.
4. ^ There is some disagreement about Penn's date of founding. The University of Pennsylvania was established in 1749 as a secondary school, the Academy of Philadelphia (instruction began in 1751), assuming the educational mandate of the Academy and Charitable School in the Province of Pennsylvania. This was part of a 1740 project that had been planned to comprise both a church and school, though due to insufficient funding only the church was built. The church building was conveyed to the Academy of Philadelphia in 1750. Since 1899, Penn has used 1740 as its official date of founding. ^[4][5][6] To complicate the picture, Princeton can point to the Log College operated by a Presbyterian minister in Bucks County, Pennsylvania from 1726 until 1746.^[7] Although it has been suggested that there is some connection between this school and the College of New Jersey that would enable Princeton to claim a founding date of 1726, Princeton does not officially do so and a Princeton historian says that the "facts do not warrant" such a claim.^{[citation needed]}
5. ^ Penn's website, like other sources, makes an important point of Penn's heritage being nonsectarian, associated with Benjamin Franklin and the Academy of Philadelphia's nonsectarian board of trustees: "The goal of Franklin's nonsectarian, practical plan would be the education of a business and governing class rather than of clergymen."^[9]. Jencks and Riesman (2001) write: "The Anglicans who founded the University of Pennsylvania, however, were evidently anxious not to alienate Philadelphia's Quakers, and they made their new college officially nonsectarian." Franklin himself was a self-described "thorough Deist." Starting in 1751, the same trustees also operated a Charity School for Boys, whose curriculum combined "general principles of Christianity" with practical instruction leading toward careers in business and the "mechanical arts" ^[10], and thus might be described as "non-denominational Christian." The charity school was originally planned, and chartered on paper, in 1740, by followers of evangelist George Whitefield, but was not built and did not operate until the charter was assumed by the Academy of Philadelphia in 1751. Since 1899, Penn has claimed a founding date of 1740, based on the charity school's charter date and the premise that it had institutional identity with the Academy of Philadelphia. Whitefield was a firebrand Methodist associated with the Great Awakening; since the Methodists did not formally break from the Church of England until 1784, Whitefield in 1740 would be labelled Episcopalian, and in fact Brown University, emphasizing its own pioneering nonsectarianism, refers to Penn's origin as "Episcopalian" ^[11]). Penn is sometimes assumed to have Quaker ties (its athletic teams are called "Quakers," and the cross-registration alliance between Penn, Haverford, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr is known as the "Quaker Consortium.") But Penn's website does not assert any formal affiliation with Quakerism, historic or otherwise, and Haverford College implicitly asserts a non-Quaker origin for Penn when it states that "Founded in 1833, Haverford is the oldest institution of higher learning with Quaker roots in North America."^[12]
6. ^ Brown's website characterizes it as "the Baptist answer to Congregationalist Yale and Harvard; Presbyterian Princeton; and Episcopalian Penn and Columbia," but adds that at the time it was "the only one that welcomed students of all religious persuasions."^[16] Brown's charter stated that "into this liberal and catholic institution shall never be admitted any religious tests, but on the contrary, all the members hereof shall forever enjoy full, free, absolute, and uninterrupted liberty of conscience." The charter called for twenty-two of the thirty-six trustees to be Baptists, but required that the remainder consist of "five Friends, four Congregationalists, and five Episcopalians"^[17]
7. ^ Dartmouth College began operating during 1768 as the collegiate department of Moor's School (1754) in Columbia, Connecticut. The collegiate department was being described in writing as "Dartmouth College" by January of 1769, when the Township of Hanover, New Hampshire voted to offer it a grant of land. The institution received a royal charter on December 13, 1769 and its students moved from Columbia to Hanover during October of 1770. The first degrees were awarded in August of 1771. Queen's College, although granted a charter earlier, began operation during 1771, after Dartmouth College began awarding degrees.
8. ^ At Transylvania's founding, its original location near Danville, Kentucky was still part of Virginia. Its current location of Lexington, Kentucky was also still in Virginia when the school moved there in 1789. Kentucky separated from Virginia in 1792.

References

1. ^ "XXIII. Education. § 13. Colonial Colleges.". The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. http://www.bartleby.com/227/1613.html. 
2. ^ http://www.wm.edu/law/about/firsts.shtml
3. ^ http://www.wm.edu/about/facts.php
4. ^ http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/entry.html
5. ^ http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/0902/thomas.html
6. ^ http://www.princeton.edu/mudd/news/faq/topics/older.shtml
7. ^ http://etcweb1.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/log_college.html
8. ^ Jencks, Christopher; David Riesman (2001). The Academic Revolution. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0-7658-0115-9.  pp. 314–5, " "The Anglicans who founded the University of Pennsylvania, however, were evidently anxious not to alienate Philadelphia's Quakers, and they made their new college officially nonsectarian."
9. ^ http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/1700s/penn1700s.html
10. ^ http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/1700s/charitysch.html
11. ^ http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/gettoknowus/ourhistory.html
12. ^ http://www.haverford.edu/publicrelations/news/QandA.html
13. ^ A Brief History of Columbia, Columbia University. Referenced 05.10.2011
14. ^ "Providence". The Encyclopædia Britannica. 22 (11 ed.). p. 511. http://books.google.com/books?id=KjwEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA511. "...and although still under its original charter was known for the first forty years as Rhode Island College." 
15. ^ http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Corporation/downloads/charter-of-brown-university.pdf
16. ^ http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Admission/gettoknowus/ourhistory.html
17. ^ http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/PRE_PYR/PROVIDENCE.html
18. ^ Guthrie, Dwight Raymond (1952). John McMillan: The Apostle Of Presbyterianism In The West. University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 80. http://ia311542.us.archive.org/0/items/johnmcmillanthea017606mbp/johnmcmillanthea017606mbp.pdf. 

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York College of Pennsylvania founded 1787 non sectarian Liberal arts Founded as York Collegiate Academy Became York Junior College York College 1960 Bachelor, Masters and Doctoral degrees 5000 student body