Brown University

The inceptions of Brown University might be dated to 1761 when three occupants of Newport, Rhode Island, drafted an appeal to the General Assembly of the settlement: 

"Your Petitioners propose to open a scholarly establishment or School for teaching youthful Gentlemen in the Languages, Mathematics, Geography and History, and such different branches of Knowledge as should be fancied. That for this End ... it will be fundamental ... to erect an open Building or Buildings for the boarding of the young and the Residence of the Professors." 

The three applicants were Ezra Stiles, minister of Newport's Second Congregational Church and future president of Yale; William Ellery, Jr., future endorser of the United States Declaration of Independence; and Josias Lyndon, future legislative head of the province. Stiles and Ellery would two years after the fact be co-creators of the Charter of the College. The manager of Stiles' papers watches that, "This draft of a request associates itself with other proof of Dr. Stiles' task for a Collegiate Institution in Rhode Island, before the contract of what got to be Brown University." 

In 1762 there is further narrative confirmation that Stiles was making arrangements for a school. On January 20, Chauncey Whittelsey, minister of the First Church of New Haven, addressed a letter from Stiles: 

"The prior week last I sent you the Copy of Yale College Charter. ... Should you gain any Ground in the Affair of a Colledge, I ought to be happy to know about it; I generously wish you Success in that." 

The Philadelphia Association of Baptist Churches likewise had an eye on Rhode Island, home of the mother church of their group, the First Baptist Church in America, established in Providence in 1638 by Roger Williams. The Baptists were so far unrepresented among provincial universities—the Congregationalists had Harvard and Yale, the Presbyterians had the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), and the Episcopalians had the College of William and Mary and King's College (later Columbia). Writing in 1784, Isaac Backus, history specialist of the New England Baptists and an inaugural Trustee of Brown, depicted the October 1762 determination taken at Philadelphia: 

"The Philadelphia Association got such a colleague with our issues, as to convey them to an anxiety that it was practicable and convenient to erect a school in the Colony of Rhode-Island, under the main heading of the Baptists; ... Mr. James Manning, who took his first degree in New-Jersey school in September, 1762, was regarded a reasonable pioneer in this critical work." 

Keeping an eye on landed at Newport in July 1763 and was acquainted with Stiles, who consented to compose the Charter for the College. Stiles' first draft was perused to the General Assembly in August 1763 and rejected by Baptist individuals who stressed that the College Board of Fellows would underrepresent the Baptists. A changed Charter, composed by Stiles and Ellery, was embraced by the Assembly on March 3, 1764. 

In September 1764 the inaugural meeting of the College Corporation was held at Newport. Senator Stephen Hopkins was picked chancellor, previous and future representative Samuel Ward was bad habit chancellor, John Tillinghast treasurer, and Thomas Eyres secretary. The Charter stipulated that the Board of Trustees involve 22 Baptists, five Quakers, five Episcopalians, and four Congregationalists. Of the 12 Fellows, eight ought to be Baptists—including the College president—"and the rest apathetically of any or all Denominations. 

The Charter was not, as is in some cases assumed, the award of King George III, but instead an Act of the frontier General Assembly. In two particulars the Charter might be said to be an exceptionally dynamic report. To start with, where different schools had curricular strictures against contradicting teachings, Brown's Charter attested that "Partisan contrasts of suppositions, might not make any Part of the Public and Classical Instruction." Second, as per University student of history Walter Bronson, "the instrument representing Brown University perceived more extensively and in a general sense than whatever other the guideline of denominational collaboration. The oft-rehashed articulation that Brown's Charter alone restricted a religious test for College enrollment is erroneous; other school sanctions were likewise liberal in that specific. 

James Manning was confirmed as the College's first president in 1765 and served until 1791. In 1770 the College moved from Warren, Rhode Island, to the peak of College Hill sitting above Providence. Solomon Drowne, a green bean in the class of 1773, wrote in his journal on March 26, 1770: 

"This day the Committee for settling the spot for the College, met at the New-Brick School House, when it was resolved it ought to be determined to ye Hill inverse Mr. John Jenkes; up the Presbyterian Lane." 

Presbyterian Lane is the present College Street. The eight-section of land site, in two bundles, had been obtained by the Corporation for £219, chiefly from Moses Brown and John Brown, the packages having "shaped a part of the first home loads of their precursor, Chad Brown, and of George Rickard, who purchased them from the Indians." University Hall—referred to until 1823 as "The College Edifice"— was demonstrated on Nassau Hall at the College of New Jersey. Its development was overseen by the firm of Nicholas Brown and Company, which burned through £2844 in the primary year fabricating the College Edifice and the neighboring President's House. 

Nicholas Brown, Junior, author of the Providence Athenaeum, prime supporter of Butler Hospital, altruist, dynamic, and abolitionist. Taking after his significant blessing in 1804, the College was renamed Brown University. Painting by Chester Harding, 1836 

The Brown family 

The Brown family—Nicholas Brown, his child Nicholas Brown, Jr., class of 1786, John Brown, Joseph Brown, and Moses Brown—were instrumental in moving the College to Providence and securing its gift. Joseph turned into an educator of common rationality at the College, John served as its treasurer from 1775 to 1796, and Nicholas, Junior, succeeded his uncle as treasurer from 1796 to 1825. 

On September 8, 1803, the Corporation voted, "That the gift of $5000 Dollars, if made to this College inside one Year from the late Commencement, might qualifies the benefactor for name the College." In a letter dated September 6, 1804, that bid was replied by College treasurer Nicholas Brown, Junior, and the Corporation regarded its guarantee: "In appreciation to Mr. Chestnut, the Corporation at the same meeting voted, 'That this College be called and known in all future time by the Name of Brown University'.Over the years, the gifts of Nicholas Brown, Jr, would add up to almost $160,000, a gigantic aggregate for that period, and incorporated the structures Hope College and Manning Hall, manufactured 1821-22 and 1834-35. 

It is here and there wrongly assumed that Brown University was "named after" John Brown, whose business action incorporated the transportation of African slaves. Actually, Brown University was named for Nicholas Brown, Jr—humanitarian, author of the Providence Athenaeum, fellow benefactor of Butler Hospital, and, urgently, an abolitionist. Under the direction of his uncle Moses Brown, one of the main abolitionists of his day, Nicholas Brown, Junior, turned into a lender of the movement.(The restricting states of mind to the slave exchange inside the Brown family—from John Brown's proud investment, to Moses and Nicholas Brown's lobbyist resistance—are portrayed in Ricardo Howell, "Subjugation, the Brown Family of Providence and Brown University" (2001, distributed online at Brown.edu), and in Charles Rappleye, Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution (New York, 2006)). 

Brigadier general James Mitchell Varnum, class of 1769, served in the Continental Army and upheld the selection of African Americans, which brought about the reconstruction of the first Rhode Island Regiment as an all-dark unit. Painting by Charles Willson Peale, 1804 

The American Revolution 

In the fall of 1776, with British vessels watching Narragansett Bay, the College library was moved out of Providence for care. On December 7, 1776, six thousand British and Hessian troops under the order of Sir Peter Parker cruised into Newport harbor. In a letter composed after the war, College president Manning said: 

"The illustrious Army arrived on Rhode Island and took ownership of the same: This acquired their Camp plain View from the College with the bare Eye; whereupon the Country traveled to Arms and walked for Providence, there, unprovided with Barracks they walked into the College and confiscated the Students, around 40 in Number." 

"In the case for harms displayed by the Corporation to the United States government," says the University history specialist, "it is expressed that the American troops utilized it for garisson huts and doctor's facility from December 10, 1776, to April 20, 1780, and that the French troops utilized it for a healing center from June 26, 1780, to May 27, 1782.The French troops were those of the Comte de Rochambeau.