Colonial colleges
The
colonial colleges are nine institutions of
higher education chartered in the
American Colonies before the
American Revolution (
1775–
1783). These nine have long been considered together, notably in the survey of their origins in the
1907 Cambridge History of English and American Literature. Although today most of these institutions refer to themselves as "
universities", they are called "colonial colleges" partly because, at the time of the revolution, only Penn called itself a "university". Each had assumed the power to grant
academic degrees, a power in
Europe only held by universities; several were offering some graduate instruction. (See
college for more on American usage of that word.)
The nine colonial colleges are listed below in order of antiquity under the name by which they were known for the bulk of the
colonial period. Also listed are the religious groups that were instrumental in each college's foundation and early history. In most cases the listed religious links, although often strong, were
de facto rather than official. (At any rate, all have long since affirmed their
secularity.) In addition to the religious/secular boundary, the line between
state and
private control was also far blurrier than today: as the distinction crystalized over time, some schools became fully independent and others part of their state's higher-education system.
Seven of the nine colonial colleges are part of the
Ivy League athletic conference:
Harvard,
Yale,
Princeton,
Penn,
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 both
public universities—the
College of William and Mary (in the
Colonial Athletic Association) and
Rutgers University, the state university of New Jersey (in the
Big East Conference).
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 "colleges" with the power to grant degrees (and in fact did not grant degrees) until after the
American Declaration of Independence in
1776. There were nine colleges in the colonies in 1770; all of them still exist, meaning that the colleges listed below are no older, whatever their origins as grammar schools. There is also the case of Queen's College, in the town of Charlotte, North Carolina, which was granted a charter by the Colonial Legislature in December, 1770. However, this charter was repealed by royal proclamation (because of the school's ties to Presbyterians) and the institution ultimately failed.
Notes: The institution, though founded in 1636, did not receive its name until 1638. It was nameless for its first two years.
William and 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."[
1] Since William and 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.[
2]
There is some disagreement about Penn's date of founding. The
University of Pennsylvania was established in 1749 as 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. See also *[
3], [
4] (Penn) and [
5] (Princeton) for carefully phrased and nuanced details. To complicate the picture, Princeton can point to the
Log College operated by a Presbyterian minister in Bucks County, Pennsylvania from 1726 until 1746. 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.
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."[
6]. 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." [
7], 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 1895, 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"[
8]). 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."[
9]
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."[
10] 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 be comprised of "five Friends, four Congregationalists, and five Episcopalians"[
11]
* 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."
*
List of oldest universities in continuous operation*
First university in the United States
