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College Founding in the New Republic, 1776–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

David W. Robson
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Extract

During the twenty-five years, 1776–1800, sixteen colleges opened in the United States that still operate today. They almost tripled the total number of the nation's colleges. The increase demonstrated the augmenting American interest in higher education and also the restless, expansive urge of the American people, for with the exceptions of the College of Charleston and St. John's College in the Chesapeake port of Annapolis, these institutions arose on the edge of settlement: in upstate New York, the district of Maine, northeastern Georgia, western Massachusetts, and even in the Territory South of the Ohio, two years before it became the state of Tennessee. Indeed, their location on the frontier was one of the primary determinants of these colleges' character, for it led these colleges to develop functions, commitments, and curricular and atmospheric traits that differed somewhat from those of the established, seaboard colleges.

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History of Education Quarterly , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , Fall 1983 , pp. 323 - 341
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Copyright © 1983 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. Debate over what constitutes college founding is perpetual among those concerned with the history of higher education. In this discussion, the inclusion of a college rests on the date it received a charter granting it the power to award college degrees. The sixteen colleges included are: Washington College in Maryland (1782); Liberty Hall Academy in Virginia (1782—now Washington and Lee University); Hampden-Sydney Google Scholar College in Virginia (1783); Transylvania Seminary in Virginia (1783—the area became Kentucky in 1792); Dickinson College in Pennsylvania (1784); St. John's College in Maryland (1784); the University of Georgia (1785); the College of Charleston in South Carolina (1785); Franklin College in Pennsylvania (1787—now Franklin and Marshall College); the University of North Carolina (1789); the University of Vermont (1791); Williams College in Massachusetts (1793); Bowdoin College in Massachusetts (1794—the area became Maine in 1820); Greenville College in Tennessee (1794—now Tusculum College); Blount College in Tennessee (1794—now the University of Tennessee, Knoxville); Union College in New York (1795). Two of these colleges, St. John's in Annapolis and the College of Charleston, are not included in the discussion that follows, for several reasons. They were urban institutions; they did not partake of the frontier influence; they were run by Anglicans or American Episcopalians and did not conform to the usual curricular practices of post-Revolutionary American higher education. For a convenient listing of the colleges established in America before 1820, see Herbst, Jurgen, From Crisis to Crisis: American College Government, 1636–1819 (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), pp. 244–53.Google Scholar

2. These two colleges are not included in the discussion that follows, for several reasons. They were urban institutions; they did not partake of the frontier influence; they were run by Anglicans or American Episcopalians; they also did not conform to the usual curricular practices of post-Revolutionary American higher education; there is some doubt that the College of Charleston offered a college-level curriculum at any time before 1800.Google Scholar

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28. “Belles Lettres Society Minutes,” June 20, 1789: cf. Aug.?, 1790, Aug. 4, 1792, July 26, 1794, Dec. 16, 1795, Dec. 9, 1797, Nov. 10, 1798.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., Dec. 12, 1789, Jan. 2, Mar. 19, July 10, ?, 1790.Google Scholar

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