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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 , 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 ). 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."[http://www.wm.edu/law/about/firsts.shtml 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 very serious about suggesting institutional continuity with the University of Henrico.[http://www.wm.edu/about/facts.php]
The question of Penn's founding date leads to a corresponding question about its original religious affiliations. Brown University refers to Penn's origin as "Episcopalian" Penn's website, like other sources, makes an important point of [http://www.upenn.edu/about/heritage.php Penn's educational heritage being nonsectarian (and associated with Benjamin Franklin and the Academy of Philadelphia's nonsectarian board of trustees). Penn's official 1740 founding date is based on an assumption of institutional continuity with George Whitefield 's church building and planned charity school. 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. Thus, a founding date of 1740 would seem to give Penn an Episcopalian founding, while insistence on a "nonsectarian" heritage would seem to place the origin of that heritage no earlier than 1749. The discrepancy could be reconciled by regarding the 1740 charity school as connected with Penn's "founding" but not with its "educational heritage." 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." 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"[http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/PRE_PYR/PROVIDENCE.html 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 "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. SEE ALSO |
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