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INTRODUCTORY NOTE: The following content is the result of the merging of two pages and their respective discussion pages, one for Talk:Colonial Colleges, and an earlier article Talk:List of colonial colleges based on a redirect I did between the two articles a few days ago. Many thanks to Nunh-huh for properly merging these discussions. The collaboration between the contributors of both the pages will, I hope, lead to a better, more comprehensive article (so far it has). — ExplorerCDT 20:27, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I am curious as to where Georgetown University falls in your categorization of our nation's oldest colleges. They can trace their history back to 1634 when the first jesuits arrived and established a school, but most place the founding in 1789. It is important to remember that the school predates the establishment of Washington DC and encountered significant prejudice as a Catholic-affiliated institution in its early years. They were not officially chartered until the mid 19th Century when one of their alumni was elected to Congress and introduced the resolution granting charter himself.
In chosing how to name each institution, I thought it would be most useful to give the name in common use during each college's colonial existence. So, for exampel, Brown had not yet acquired its new name but Harvard and Yale had. (Not that their old nomikers — "the new college" & "the collegiate school" — were real names anyway.) That's why I don't think "the Charity School of Philadelphia" is the most appropriate name for Penn — it only lasted for a relatively short time under that name, and it wasn't a college yet at that point. (And colleges, after all, are what the article is really about.) Doops 04:09, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Nunh-huh, I don't see how "Puritan is too broad a class for Yale." With a lower-case p, I suppose puritan can refer to any sect of any religion who believe in purifying things; but with a capital P, I think everybody knows we're talking about the Puritans of colonial New England, whose name came from the fact that, at least initially, their English forbears believed in Purifying the Church of England from within (as opposed to other nonconformists like the Pilgrims and the Quakers and so forth who just quit the C of E altogether). Indeed, I could just as easily say "Congregational is too broad a class" since any sect of any religion who believes in congregational organization (as opposed to church hierarchy) could be called "congregational" with a lower-case C.
The real point is that there was no official organized church which founded Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth — there was never an organized church called the "Puritan Church" and the "Congregational Church" as an organization considerably postdated their foundation. The people who founded the schools were all what-we-would-today-call-puritans, of course; and assumed that their institutions were too; and fired their presidents if their unorthodox views couldn't be overlooked — but all this was simply de facto. The puritans of colonial New England were simply the reality, mostly defined not by what they were, but by what they weren't — they weren't popists; they weren't almost-popists like the Church of England; they didn't believe in crazy notions like anapedobaptism or pacifism or levelling. All of those groups (when the puritans allowed them to function at all in New England) had to organize themselves; but the puritans just took themselves for granted. "Puritan" and "Congregational" were still adjectives, not names.
Returning from my empty pontifications to the article at hand: there's no reason to change Yale's affiliation without changing Harvard's and Dartmouth's too since they were all participants in the same basic situation. Now it's true that by the 18th century the adjective "Puritan" was probably less in fashion than "Congregationalist" and so I can see a case for using the latter. But I would push for "Puritan" on the grounds that it's clearer to the reader: "Puritan" is the name we all immediately associate with colonial New England, even if they didn't go around applying that name to themselves all the time. "Congregationalist" on the other hand pobably suggests the friendly, inoffensive, rather liberal Congregational Church (or, today, UCC) into which the Puritans somehow evolved. At any rate, I'm changing the labelling of the article to better reflect reality. Doops 06:15, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I disagree. I think "Puritan" is associated with Massachusetts, and "Congregationalism" with Connecticut. Yale has always considered itself a Congregationalist institution. Pierpont, Andrew and Woodbridge, who founded the college, had all been ordained by their Connecticut congregations. Pierson, the first rector, was a congregational minister, who obtained the permission of his congregation at Killingworth before accepting the position as rector at Saybrook. While this is to some extent a matter of the "fineness" to which one "lumps" or "splits" the designation (one could characterize them all as "Christian" or "Protestant", though that would hardly be helpful), the early history of the college centered around congregational issues. Its great controversies were focused on issues of congregationalism, not puritanism, e.g the Saybrook Platform of 1708 enforcing consociation, the orthodoxy of rectors, the issues of what congregation students belonged to. When Congregationalism was disestablished as the state religion, Yale founded a "Congregationalist" divinity school, not a "Puritan" one - though of course this was post-colonial. - Nunh-huh 06:43, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Well, I always knew that the founders of New Haven and Connecticut colonies had their differences with Massachusetts norms; but I guess I've never heard all the details before. Based on what you've written, would I be right in surmising that a major difference is that in Connecticut ministers were actually ordained by their congregations while in Mass they were ordained by other ministers? Interesting. That said, though, although Connecticut may hence have taken the principle of congregationalism further than Mass, wouldn't you still call the massachusetts churches "congregational" (insofar as they called their own pastors, even if they didn't ordain them)? And wouldn't you still call the Connecticut ones "puritan" (insofar as they are an offshoot of the Massachusetts ones)?
Also, I think it's fair to say that a major factor here is simple chronology: the world of 1700 was considerably different from that of 1640. The differernces between the foundations of Harvard and Yale may have as much to do with that as with geography, no? Would you say that the great controversies in Mass in 1700 were about puritanism? As I wrote in my earlier post, I am dubious (although I cannot claim to be an expert on the topic) that anybody in either state went around calling himself a "puritan" in the year 1700 — surely that would have seemed a rather old-fashioned word?
You're certainly right that a great deal depends on how much fineness is needed. Despite their differences — which I suppose I ought to learn more about someday — surely the chuches of Massachusetts and Connecticut were more alike than not; and if Harvard hadn't suddenly gone unitarian in the early 19th century, you can bet that it too would have founded a congregationalist divinity school. So, here's a question: if you had to lump the three schools in question under one name, which would you advocate? Although I certainly acknowledge the deficiencies of my knowledge on the subject, I still have to wonder about the issue of clarity to the reader, who will most likely not be a church historian. I still think that despite the word's deficiencies, 'puritan' is probably clearest. Doops 07:11, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, the differences are certainly a matter of chronology as much as geography, and I agree that the founders of Yale in 1701 would not call themselves "Puritans": that is rather my point! Granularity is therefore the issue: I think lumping Harvard & Yale together blurs a distinction that should be made. Certainly you are correct that the distinction should be made between Anglicanism on one hand and the tradition they represent on another, but I think the finer distinction is worth making. When Thomas Clap established a professorship of divinity (Yale's first professorship) in 1745, he turned to the General Association of the Congregational Churches of Connecticut for support, and when he established the first college church in America at Yale it was as a congregational church. Hopefully you will like the compromise I have have suggested, listing both denominational attributes for Yale, which should make it clear no matter which word the reader is more used to. - Nunh-huh 07:39, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Below the table, the article talks about "the nine" colonial colleges and "the two" that aren't Ivy League members. But the table lists more than that in both categories. Can someone who knows their early American education history better than I clear this up? Bbpen 14:52, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Oh. Heh. In my rush to read the table, I missed the explanation above it. Bbpen 14:58, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I redid the explanatory text at the top a bit to give more stress to the actual Colonial Colleges. Personally, I don't think that the seven colleges not chartered as colleges until after the revolution belong in this article, at least in such a prominent position, since they have not been historically considered "Colonial Colleges", nor were most of them institutions of tertiary educations ("colleges") until well after the Revolution. Nevertheless, their inclusion is certainly informative and factual, if somewhat off-topic, so I opted not to delete them. Instead, I boldfaced the Colonial Colleges in the list. Hopefully, the (albeit brief) confusion experienced by Bbpen and no doubt others will be obviated in the future. /// Citizen Sunshine 23:40, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
FYI, on an old if not stale point. Presbyterians and Congregationalists both saw themselves as the legitimate Church of England. Both Massachusetts and Connecticut were Church-State, and later, college theocracies. Both were charted by a King. Each in turn were chartered by the state government. Massachusetts charter was revoked on June 18, 1684; many Englishmen assumed that "the calf died with the mother" and Harvard was now no longer legitimate. Though both were Congregationalist, they, of course, split over time. Harvard followed the Cambridge Platform of polity, Yale followed the Sabyrook platform. With the Cambridge polity, each individual parish elected its own minister; with the Saybrook polity, county level "consociations" were involved in the decision process. Princeton, though founded by a former Yale educated Congregationalists, followed the Westminster Presbyterian platform, which was more like the Saybrook platform. Its real distinction was that it was NEW LIGHT, not OLD LIGHT. I'll try to see if any of this should be added to the article. Harrycroswell ( talk) 13:06, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
Shouldn't this be at Colonial colleges? Darkcore 07:02, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Let's not. I hate that policy and I wish I knew how to get that changed. There are some circumstances where matters of aesthetics and balance should overcome the titling policy. — ExplorerCDT 06:13, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
On 22 December 2004, Mat334 added this belowstated text, which I removed shortly after. He attempted to insert it on 15 December, but I removed it then pending verification. I do not think the passage is relevant, but as it currently stands, it is unverifiable and I do not believe it should be in the article as such.
I confronted Dr. McCaughey via e-mail regarding this statement, and he said he had written such a passage in his book Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University (Columbia University Press, 2003) ISBN 0231130082. I prompted him for citations where I could verify it, as he did not footnote this in his book. I further stated frankly that on its face value the passage looks like an attempt to aggrandize Columbia as in other college and state histories, and in the biographies of royal governors at the time (Franklin in New Jersey, Bernard in Massachusetts, Tyron in New York, Trumbull in Connecticut) none mention their endorsement of such a plan, much less the existence of a proposal. No state archives (and I called many archivists I know this past week), save New York's, even records gubernatorial correspondence with Myles Cooper, the Columbia (then Kings) president. He demurred at the suggestion and has since avoided providing citations. As such, it is unverifiable and such speculative misinformation does not belong parading around as a fact in an encyclopedia article. — ExplorerCDT 15:20, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Earlier, ExplorerCDT, you said:
"It's up to you to either take your lumps and accept the deletion of this claim or prove my edit wrong through sufficient documentary evidence establishing your claim as fact. Something that is, at this time, lacking. Thus, if you take it as a challenge and prove successful, I will not have any problem with such an edit."
and:
"... I will continue deleting the reference until it is verifiable."
I believe that in my place, ttan has proved successful in providing sufficient documentary evidence establishing my claim as fact, and that my claim is now verifiable. As such, according to what you said, I will append my claim to the article once more and do not expect it to be deleted again. I will wait 24 hours to do this in case you have any further objections. Mat334 16:23, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
(Editorial Note: I reconfigured and made minor format changes–indents mostly–to the section created by
ttan entitled Columbia as an American Oxford, Verified which was in response to the initial post I made above in this section, and chose to combine it with into the one section for the sake of argument continuity. There is no need to create a new section everytime someone responds to an above section, and I thought the creation of a new section was superfluous and would potentially breed discontinuity. —
ExplorerCDT 19:17, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC))
As ExplorerCDT if you click on the name was apparently a "sock puppet" for a user who was banned from Wikipedia, and his strange editing activities are a decade old,I suggest restoring the reasonable, well researched, and useful passage on "Columbia as Oxford". Harrycroswell ( talk) 12:30, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
Hi, Doops here, the original creator of this article (i.e. List of colonial colleges; all further references in these two ¶s to "this" article refer to that article, whose history has been merged into this page's). In mid-November, User:ExplorerCDT started another article, Colonial Colleges (with unexplained capitalization), which basically borrowed much of the content of this article and put a different spin on it; a glance at the original first version of that article makes it clear that it was not written independently but was in fact based directly on this one. Today, ExplorerCDT has deleted this article's content and redirected it to his article, calling List of colonial colleges a "duplicate" of his/her article. This is a little high-handed, I must say. I realize that there is no "ownership" of articles in the wikipedia, and there's no sense in which this is "my" article; but I can't help feeling that ExplorerCDT's actions constitute something of an end-run around me and other users who have contributed to this article — instead of engaging us, he/she's created his/her own version and then deleted ours.
Furthermore, the two versions were not identical; and while I agree that there's no need for two articles on this subject, it's my opinion that this version had both a better title ("List of...") AND better content ("date first degrees granted" is solid and concrete in ways that "foundations" often aren't; integrating ancient schools and academies into the list is needlessly confusing). Now, that's just my opinion, and I have no right to impose it, which is why I didn't peremptorally delete ExplorerCDT's article back in November; I feel that he/she should have shown the same courtesy and, if bothered by the duplication, should have instituted a talk page discussion about the relative merits of the two articles and their titles. I have no stomach for a fight, so I'm not gonna start reverting; I'm just writing this rant for the sake of history. Doops 22:56, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I've merged the histories of the two articles. "Cut-and-paste" operations obscure the original authorship, and ought to be avoided. There is now just one article, with a combined history; the current content, however, will still have to be determined by the usual consensual editing practices. - Nunh-huh 00:10, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Shortly after the creation of the Virginia colony, the settlers sought to establish a school mostly intended to educate the Native Americans (mostly to christianize them). This effort was the first. Whether or not it was just a simple school or a college is another matter to be discussed, verified, etc. It was shortlived, because it closed up shortly after an Indian uprising in 1622. Is this worth researching for, or adding to, the article? — ExplorerCDT 19:14, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
See, here's the problem. While I'm sure at least a couple of these institutions had explicit religious ties (somebody help me out with an example), and at least Penn (and possibly others) was/were explicitly non-sectarian, most of them simply said nothing one way or the other. To take the example I know best, Harvard had no formal ties to the puritan church — indeed there was no such thing as the "puritan church." It was all just taken for granted in Massachusetts. How strong was the influence? Well, on the one hand Henry Dunster was forced to resign after admitting to anapedobaptist beliefs; on the other hand, students faced no religious test and the education was the traditional English University curriculum, certainly not a seminary's. Seen in this light, then, it seems a little unfair for Penn to claim "non-sectarian" status, despite its official avowal to that effect, since, like the other insitutions, it certainly had religious influence. Hence my proposed compromise wording. Doops 19:48, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Looks like the WikiNazis won out finally enforcing the naming conventions rule (with which some of us strenuously disagree) and lowercasing the word "colleges" in the article's title. — ExplorerCDT 15:37, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Nunh-huh reverted not only my change of the Collegiate School to the Collegiate School of Connecticut in this article, but my addition of the Collegiate School of Connecticut to the intro paragraph of Yale University. Please see Talk:Yale University for a discussion of this. – MementoVivere 02:38, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I guess "founded" is self-explanatory, but what is "chartered"? Can someone who knows add a definition of the two? Bbpen 18:18, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
After months of secret itching to do so, I've finally been bold and switched the name conventions back to a form not seen since this article's early days: the instituations are now listed by their colonial-era names with modern names being the afterthought. I have two main reasonings for this:
Please also note the explanatory sentence in the preceding ¶. Ta-da. Doops | talk 7 July 2005 06:27 (UTC)
Makes sense to me. But what about the second list ("Other colonial-era foundations")? Bbpen 7 July 2005 12:43 (UTC)
I removed the reference to William and Mary as a "public ivy." It is completely unrelated to its status as a colonial college. Also the "public ivies" aren't a formally recognized or even easily defined list. Bindingtheory 00:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Removed the public ivy reference again. It belongs on the College of William and Mary page, not the colonial college page. It is a random fact unrelated to the institution's status as a colonial college. The references to the ivy league itself make more sense here since the ivy league is a formally recognized group, and their association with one another as a league is directly related to the fact that they were nearly the only colleges in existence during their early history. - Bindingtheory 20:15, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
The only remotely neutral policy is to use the official date of founding as listed by the schools themselves. Harvard should be listed as 1636, Wm and Mary as 1693, Penn as 1740. Add a short footnote if further explanation is necessary. More detailed info should go in the articles on the actual schools. - Bindingtheory 18:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
The note explaining Penn’s founding was over 35% of the length of the text of the article itself (ie. Minus the charts and notes). I just don’t think that’s proportional to the importance of that subject in this article. The old version of the note has a basic explanation of the 1740, 1749, 1751 dates, and the 1755 charter is listed in the chart, so that a reader can make up his/her own mind on the topic, plus a wikilink back to the UPenn page, which goes into more detail. If further detail is necessary, then I think it belongs on the Penn page, which is explicitly about that institution. At least for now, I’m reverting it back to the old version of the footnote, with an additional statement that there is disagreement about the date, hopefully with discussion to follow here on the Talk page. - Bindingtheory 15:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
As someone who attended none of the universities listed, nor have ever been employed at any of them, I can only (neutrally) observe there is nothing neutral whatsoever in the founding dates listed by the schools themselves. The column on the table labeled "founded" should probably read "founding date from the university's web site as written by the current marketing department". Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn all played rather silly games trying to push back their founding dates - presumably for marketing purposes -- not just once, but thorough out their history. Yale's President Clap started this in 1765; Harvard has changed the date on its seal (!) several times. Presumably they figured no one would notice. In particular, using the founding of grammar "feeding" academies sometimes in the same town as the college as the start date is foolish; Connecticut, for example, had a law that required towns over 500 to have a grammar or secondary school; by 1756 there would be over sixty towns and theoretically 60 secondary schools in CT alone. Penn would not even get on the list by this criteria. The only data that matters is, indeed, as others have noted, the first instruction date. The table should be sorted by this date. Harrycroswell ( talk) 10:04, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
The second half of the first paragraph does little to explain "college" vs. "university" in these schools or in the U.S. in general. It is abstruse for readers unfamiliar with American terminology and mystifying for readers unfamiliar with anything else. That the schools changed their names is obvious from the table. I'm not sure why the issue needs to be addressed here anyway. "College" is the usual generic term for institutions of higher education in the U.S. A quick statement to this fact and a link to the article College would explain the situation.
The information at College#The origin of America's usage would be a benefit to this article to more fully treat the colonial colleges collectively. - Acjelen 05:51, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I like the two-column "founded/chartered" presentation and I like the current presentation of facts.
Of course... this still doesn't solve the problem of how to list them by "antiquity" since they are currently in order neither by if the institution's officially-claimed founding date (which would place Penn fourth) nor by date of charter (which would put Penn sixth, after Columbia!) Not doing anything about this... so long as the situation is clear and fairly presented to anyone who actually can manage to care about it, which it currently is. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:08, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
The best order would be that of earliest degrees granted. Harvard's, for example, was 1642. Doops | talk 20:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Brown's website says [1]:
Penn, however, says [2]
and refers to it as "nonsectarian" [3]:
These don't actually contradict each other, but I'm beginning to think there's something that needs to be looked into. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:39, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I graduated from Penn in 1988, and this is the first I've ever heard of Penn being connected to the Episcopalian Church in any way. As for the Quaker designation, yes, it's the nickname of the sports teams, but Quakers played no role in the founding of the school. Penn's secular foundation was consistent with Franklin's wish to teach practical subjects to students, in contrast with a curriculum of classical languages offered by such schools as Harvard and Yale.
St. John's College, as it now stands, is without religious affiliation. The new program, began in 1939. In the article, under religious influence, is listed "many Christian sects". The school is centered around the Great books of Western Civilization, and there are many religious authors on the program, including the old and new testaments of the Bible, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, and countless others like Kierkegaard and Pascal who are clearly christians of their own kind. But, the school also reads hundreds of non-religious authors.
On their website, the school says "The College was founded in Annapolis in 1696 as King William's School and chartered in 1784 as St. John's College. A second campus was opened in 1964 in Santa Fe. St. John's is a four-year, co-educational, liberal arts college with no religious affiliation." I am not familiar with the schools religious influences before it became a great books school, but maybe you'll consider changing the entry or footnoting it like some of the others. Thanks.
Last time I looked at this topic, I was feeling rather irritated by the issue of Penn's trying to have it both ways (as represented by the presence of Whitefield and Franklin statues on campus). Dammit, if they wanna be 1740, they gotta be Episcopalian!
But on thinking about it some more, it seems to me that the most neutral thing to do, as with founding dates, is to use the institution's own self-description, which in the case of Penn is "nonsectarian," and add a clarifying (or clouding, as the case may be) annotation. Even though I think it's contradictory to claim a founding date of 1740 and a nonsectarian heritage, that is in fact exactly what Penn claims.
Now, as to the Quaker origin. What about that? Oddly, I did some fairly casual Googling and couldn't find any particular reference to the University of Pennsylvania as having being influenced by Quakerism. Obviously, Quakers were influential in everything going on in Philadelphia at the time, and, yes, I know what Penn's athletic teams are called... but Benjamin Franklin was not a Quaker, and our University of Pennsylvania article does not mention Quakers in other than an athletic context.
The Penn website's historical timeline of Penn in the age of Franklin doesn't mention Quakerism. William Smith, the first provost, was Anglican.
I notice too that despite Quakerism's historical respect for women, Penn seems to have been fairly late at being coeducational...
So, what's the case for saying that Penn had a Quaker affiliation at the time of its founding? Dpbsmith (talk) 18:01, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
P. S. Yes, I know that Penn, the person, himself, was a Quaker... but we are not talking about William Penn University (which, for the record, does in fact claim to have been "founded by Quaker pioneers in 1873" [7]) Dpbsmith (talk) 18:09, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
The section for "other" colonial foundations seems to be meant for current colleges and universities that descend from colonial academies. Therefore these two notes seem inappropriate and were removed:
"There is, however, 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. The school's charter, however, was repealed by Royal Proclamation due to the school's ties to the Presbyterian Church."
I cannot find an institution existing today that claims to be descended from this Queen's College. And:
"There is also the case of Georgetown University, whose history of teaching in the same location can be traced back to 1634 (see Note 7, below."
Without explaining that a colonial academy occupied the site and that it was transformed into Georgetown, this seems inaccurate and at any rate superfluous, since it's covered in the note.
1dell1 21:07, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
No sources are provided for the assertion that Jesuit teaching began in 1634, nor for any "controversy" about the founding date. Georgetown's website gives a founding date of 1789, describes Georgetown's history as extending "from 1789 to the present," and mentions no dates earlier than 1784, when founder Fr. John Carroll was appointed Superior to the American Mission. [9]
Material suggesting an earlier "founding" should not be placed in the article without a good, verifiable supporting reference. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:30, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I am disputing the claim that Rutgers and W&M were asked to join the Ivy League but declined. William & Mary was a public university at the time, and had been for a long time. The Ivy League, in contrast, was purposefully made up of private schools. W&M also had never played Yale in football, had only played Princeton 1 time in 80 years of the sport, etc. It had no rivalry with any of these schools. While Rutgers did enjoy a football rivalry with Princeton at the time, Rutgers had just merged with the University of Newark and so was a very large university with branches in different geographic locations... it would be hard to see them being asked as well. I find it highly doubtful. Also, would not one writer in the Internet Age have written an article lamenting the fact that one of these schools did not accept the invitation? ExplorerCDT cited numerous rolls of microfilm as his "source", saying that if he had to list an article, it would be a list of over 500 and too lengthy. He has consistently avoided the question as to why he can't list just one or two articles with actual dates, that someone could easily verify. Until specific articles with specific dates can be listed and verified, I am disputing the accuracy of these claims. Wise 13:01, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Please use Ivy League (talk) to discuss this issue. Uris 13:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, this article either needs to cover colonial colleges across the world, such as those that existed in the UK, or it needs to move to a more appropriate page name to allow for such an article to exist. I did flag this issue with {{ worldview}}, but it has been removed, so I'll reinstate until a consensus can be reached -- Ratarsed ( talk) 20:54, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
The source provided states that Pittsburgh Academy (the elementary forerunner to the University of Pittsburgh) was founded in 1786 and chartered the following year. This source also mentions "a school...beginning probably in 1770" but this is too vague, uncertain and unverifiable (see How to Use Sources). Other sources given show various other dates but none mention that same date or anything within ten years of it. Additionally, a cursory view of the university's webpage will also reveal no official claim to any date before 1786. As a result, and unless another source mentioned this date clearly, this cannot be held as a widely accept date and must not be included according to WP policy. No matter how hard you try to shoehorn your institution as a colonial-era related institution it simply does not fit. If you have a problem with this, I suggest you open an RfC or provide another source that clearly supports your proposition. Anubis3 ( talk) 08:14, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Please fix the article. The same style of numbering is used in both the explanatory notes and the reference footnotes. Racepacket ( talk) 11:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
With these two edits, User:Sammy Houston has turned this article back into a kludge (i.e. "An ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole"), with bizarre templates in the "See also" section and paragraph after paragraph outlining each college's claims to being a "Colonial College." I believe that this is the wrong way to go, and I invite users to discuss those changes. Instead, I believe that this article should return to this state, which is more list-like. Any other comments -- GrapedApe ( talk) 03:24, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
Disagreement with recent deletions. Thanks for your message, GrapedApe. What on earth is a "Kludge"? Why do a number of Wikipedia users invent esoteric terms to codify their subjective tastes? That's simply bizarre. This is not a computer science or neuroscience or aerospace related article. This article concerns colonial history. If anyone can find a reference to a "kludge" in a serious discussion of colonial American history, please share it with us. I did not create this article or add the synoposes of histories for the colleges. I added to some of those synopses. I recommend that the synopses be restored because they add useful and interesting depth to this article as well as content that may not be available in the articles concerning the respective colleges. This is not a question of supporting claims of these colleges to being viewed as colonial colleges but, rather, providing readers with some basic information about significant colonial era events, personalities and principles that led to the unique considerations surrounding the foundation of each of the 9 colleges.
As an aside, I notice that both of the above commenters appear to have affiliations with universities that are not featured in this article. That may explain why the relevance of some of the historical content is not apparent. As for the suggestion of "superfluous" portals, the Calvinism portal is very much relevant to this article as covered above in the discussion of the Puritanism of several of the founders of many of the colonial colleges, the colonies in which those colleges were founded and the creeds celebrated, practiced and enforced in the early colonial years of several of these colleges. Also, there's a difference between baptism and Baptists. Baptists played a unique role in American history in promoting religious and academic freedom through the King Charles II charter for the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Conversely, British loyalists played a noteworthy role in restraining independent currents at King's College in New York.
I recommend that the synoposes be restored and maintained and that the portals relevant to the religious institutional underpinnings and roots of each of the colonial colleges be restored for clarity and relevant information. That is vital for understanding the historical evolution of each of the colleges to their very different contemporary institutional identities.
If anyone wants to pore over http://pike.services.brown.edu/bamco/bamco.php?eadid=ms-1e-1 and figure out at what point between 1770 and 1779 the "Rhode Island College" moniker was officially adopted, more power to you. In 1773, Manning was the president of the College or University in blah blah blah. In 1772, a list of worthy recipients of degrees from Rhode Island College was proposed. In 1775, the corporation referred to it as "the College in the Colony of Rhode Island". In 1776, there was a vote by the "Fellows and Trustees of Rhode Island College". In 1780, there's an advertisement for "the College in this Town". I give up. :-) -- SarekOfVulcan (talk)
Should a short section be added for what happened to Colonial American colleges in the 13 states during the Revolutionary War? A lot of people assume that the Colonial period ended in 1783, not 1776. Technically, the period seems to be defined in Wikipedia's article Colonial history of the United States as anything relating to the modern territory of the USA from 1492 to July 4, 1776 -- but other parts of Wikipedia such as the Timeline of Colonial America referenced in that same article seem to extended it to 1783. In fact, the British occupied most of the colleges at one point. The entire country was not fully "American" until the British pulled out of NYC. The Wikipedia timelines notes, "1783 – September: Britain signs the Treaty of Paris, recognizing American independence. November 25: The British evacuate New York, marking the end of British rule, and General George Washington triumphantly returns with the Continental Army." A section on what the war did to the colleges might be of interest (most of them closed for a period of time). Also, what happened to the College of Philadelphia during the war, its confiscation by the Republic of Pennsylvania and renaming, and the founding of two new colleges in wartime by Provost William Smith could be mentioned, though the two colleges might be left off of the table. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Harrycroswell ( talk • contribs) 14:17, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
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The result of the move request was: moved to Colonial colleges. No prejudice against a new RM arguing the merits of whether it should be a plural or not, but clearly there is a consensus to move away from the "list of" format. Jenks24 ( talk) 16:10, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
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INTRODUCTORY NOTE: The following content is the result of the merging of two pages and their respective discussion pages, one for Talk:Colonial Colleges, and an earlier article Talk:List of colonial colleges based on a redirect I did between the two articles a few days ago. Many thanks to Nunh-huh for properly merging these discussions. The collaboration between the contributors of both the pages will, I hope, lead to a better, more comprehensive article (so far it has). — ExplorerCDT 20:27, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I am curious as to where Georgetown University falls in your categorization of our nation's oldest colleges. They can trace their history back to 1634 when the first jesuits arrived and established a school, but most place the founding in 1789. It is important to remember that the school predates the establishment of Washington DC and encountered significant prejudice as a Catholic-affiliated institution in its early years. They were not officially chartered until the mid 19th Century when one of their alumni was elected to Congress and introduced the resolution granting charter himself.
In chosing how to name each institution, I thought it would be most useful to give the name in common use during each college's colonial existence. So, for exampel, Brown had not yet acquired its new name but Harvard and Yale had. (Not that their old nomikers — "the new college" & "the collegiate school" — were real names anyway.) That's why I don't think "the Charity School of Philadelphia" is the most appropriate name for Penn — it only lasted for a relatively short time under that name, and it wasn't a college yet at that point. (And colleges, after all, are what the article is really about.) Doops 04:09, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Nunh-huh, I don't see how "Puritan is too broad a class for Yale." With a lower-case p, I suppose puritan can refer to any sect of any religion who believe in purifying things; but with a capital P, I think everybody knows we're talking about the Puritans of colonial New England, whose name came from the fact that, at least initially, their English forbears believed in Purifying the Church of England from within (as opposed to other nonconformists like the Pilgrims and the Quakers and so forth who just quit the C of E altogether). Indeed, I could just as easily say "Congregational is too broad a class" since any sect of any religion who believes in congregational organization (as opposed to church hierarchy) could be called "congregational" with a lower-case C.
The real point is that there was no official organized church which founded Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth — there was never an organized church called the "Puritan Church" and the "Congregational Church" as an organization considerably postdated their foundation. The people who founded the schools were all what-we-would-today-call-puritans, of course; and assumed that their institutions were too; and fired their presidents if their unorthodox views couldn't be overlooked — but all this was simply de facto. The puritans of colonial New England were simply the reality, mostly defined not by what they were, but by what they weren't — they weren't popists; they weren't almost-popists like the Church of England; they didn't believe in crazy notions like anapedobaptism or pacifism or levelling. All of those groups (when the puritans allowed them to function at all in New England) had to organize themselves; but the puritans just took themselves for granted. "Puritan" and "Congregational" were still adjectives, not names.
Returning from my empty pontifications to the article at hand: there's no reason to change Yale's affiliation without changing Harvard's and Dartmouth's too since they were all participants in the same basic situation. Now it's true that by the 18th century the adjective "Puritan" was probably less in fashion than "Congregationalist" and so I can see a case for using the latter. But I would push for "Puritan" on the grounds that it's clearer to the reader: "Puritan" is the name we all immediately associate with colonial New England, even if they didn't go around applying that name to themselves all the time. "Congregationalist" on the other hand pobably suggests the friendly, inoffensive, rather liberal Congregational Church (or, today, UCC) into which the Puritans somehow evolved. At any rate, I'm changing the labelling of the article to better reflect reality. Doops 06:15, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I disagree. I think "Puritan" is associated with Massachusetts, and "Congregationalism" with Connecticut. Yale has always considered itself a Congregationalist institution. Pierpont, Andrew and Woodbridge, who founded the college, had all been ordained by their Connecticut congregations. Pierson, the first rector, was a congregational minister, who obtained the permission of his congregation at Killingworth before accepting the position as rector at Saybrook. While this is to some extent a matter of the "fineness" to which one "lumps" or "splits" the designation (one could characterize them all as "Christian" or "Protestant", though that would hardly be helpful), the early history of the college centered around congregational issues. Its great controversies were focused on issues of congregationalism, not puritanism, e.g the Saybrook Platform of 1708 enforcing consociation, the orthodoxy of rectors, the issues of what congregation students belonged to. When Congregationalism was disestablished as the state religion, Yale founded a "Congregationalist" divinity school, not a "Puritan" one - though of course this was post-colonial. - Nunh-huh 06:43, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Well, I always knew that the founders of New Haven and Connecticut colonies had their differences with Massachusetts norms; but I guess I've never heard all the details before. Based on what you've written, would I be right in surmising that a major difference is that in Connecticut ministers were actually ordained by their congregations while in Mass they were ordained by other ministers? Interesting. That said, though, although Connecticut may hence have taken the principle of congregationalism further than Mass, wouldn't you still call the massachusetts churches "congregational" (insofar as they called their own pastors, even if they didn't ordain them)? And wouldn't you still call the Connecticut ones "puritan" (insofar as they are an offshoot of the Massachusetts ones)?
Also, I think it's fair to say that a major factor here is simple chronology: the world of 1700 was considerably different from that of 1640. The differernces between the foundations of Harvard and Yale may have as much to do with that as with geography, no? Would you say that the great controversies in Mass in 1700 were about puritanism? As I wrote in my earlier post, I am dubious (although I cannot claim to be an expert on the topic) that anybody in either state went around calling himself a "puritan" in the year 1700 — surely that would have seemed a rather old-fashioned word?
You're certainly right that a great deal depends on how much fineness is needed. Despite their differences — which I suppose I ought to learn more about someday — surely the chuches of Massachusetts and Connecticut were more alike than not; and if Harvard hadn't suddenly gone unitarian in the early 19th century, you can bet that it too would have founded a congregationalist divinity school. So, here's a question: if you had to lump the three schools in question under one name, which would you advocate? Although I certainly acknowledge the deficiencies of my knowledge on the subject, I still have to wonder about the issue of clarity to the reader, who will most likely not be a church historian. I still think that despite the word's deficiencies, 'puritan' is probably clearest. Doops 07:11, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yes, the differences are certainly a matter of chronology as much as geography, and I agree that the founders of Yale in 1701 would not call themselves "Puritans": that is rather my point! Granularity is therefore the issue: I think lumping Harvard & Yale together blurs a distinction that should be made. Certainly you are correct that the distinction should be made between Anglicanism on one hand and the tradition they represent on another, but I think the finer distinction is worth making. When Thomas Clap established a professorship of divinity (Yale's first professorship) in 1745, he turned to the General Association of the Congregational Churches of Connecticut for support, and when he established the first college church in America at Yale it was as a congregational church. Hopefully you will like the compromise I have have suggested, listing both denominational attributes for Yale, which should make it clear no matter which word the reader is more used to. - Nunh-huh 07:39, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Below the table, the article talks about "the nine" colonial colleges and "the two" that aren't Ivy League members. But the table lists more than that in both categories. Can someone who knows their early American education history better than I clear this up? Bbpen 14:52, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Oh. Heh. In my rush to read the table, I missed the explanation above it. Bbpen 14:58, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I redid the explanatory text at the top a bit to give more stress to the actual Colonial Colleges. Personally, I don't think that the seven colleges not chartered as colleges until after the revolution belong in this article, at least in such a prominent position, since they have not been historically considered "Colonial Colleges", nor were most of them institutions of tertiary educations ("colleges") until well after the Revolution. Nevertheless, their inclusion is certainly informative and factual, if somewhat off-topic, so I opted not to delete them. Instead, I boldfaced the Colonial Colleges in the list. Hopefully, the (albeit brief) confusion experienced by Bbpen and no doubt others will be obviated in the future. /// Citizen Sunshine 23:40, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
FYI, on an old if not stale point. Presbyterians and Congregationalists both saw themselves as the legitimate Church of England. Both Massachusetts and Connecticut were Church-State, and later, college theocracies. Both were charted by a King. Each in turn were chartered by the state government. Massachusetts charter was revoked on June 18, 1684; many Englishmen assumed that "the calf died with the mother" and Harvard was now no longer legitimate. Though both were Congregationalist, they, of course, split over time. Harvard followed the Cambridge Platform of polity, Yale followed the Sabyrook platform. With the Cambridge polity, each individual parish elected its own minister; with the Saybrook polity, county level "consociations" were involved in the decision process. Princeton, though founded by a former Yale educated Congregationalists, followed the Westminster Presbyterian platform, which was more like the Saybrook platform. Its real distinction was that it was NEW LIGHT, not OLD LIGHT. I'll try to see if any of this should be added to the article. Harrycroswell ( talk) 13:06, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
Shouldn't this be at Colonial colleges? Darkcore 07:02, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Let's not. I hate that policy and I wish I knew how to get that changed. There are some circumstances where matters of aesthetics and balance should overcome the titling policy. — ExplorerCDT 06:13, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
On 22 December 2004, Mat334 added this belowstated text, which I removed shortly after. He attempted to insert it on 15 December, but I removed it then pending verification. I do not think the passage is relevant, but as it currently stands, it is unverifiable and I do not believe it should be in the article as such.
I confronted Dr. McCaughey via e-mail regarding this statement, and he said he had written such a passage in his book Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University (Columbia University Press, 2003) ISBN 0231130082. I prompted him for citations where I could verify it, as he did not footnote this in his book. I further stated frankly that on its face value the passage looks like an attempt to aggrandize Columbia as in other college and state histories, and in the biographies of royal governors at the time (Franklin in New Jersey, Bernard in Massachusetts, Tyron in New York, Trumbull in Connecticut) none mention their endorsement of such a plan, much less the existence of a proposal. No state archives (and I called many archivists I know this past week), save New York's, even records gubernatorial correspondence with Myles Cooper, the Columbia (then Kings) president. He demurred at the suggestion and has since avoided providing citations. As such, it is unverifiable and such speculative misinformation does not belong parading around as a fact in an encyclopedia article. — ExplorerCDT 15:20, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Earlier, ExplorerCDT, you said:
"It's up to you to either take your lumps and accept the deletion of this claim or prove my edit wrong through sufficient documentary evidence establishing your claim as fact. Something that is, at this time, lacking. Thus, if you take it as a challenge and prove successful, I will not have any problem with such an edit."
and:
"... I will continue deleting the reference until it is verifiable."
I believe that in my place, ttan has proved successful in providing sufficient documentary evidence establishing my claim as fact, and that my claim is now verifiable. As such, according to what you said, I will append my claim to the article once more and do not expect it to be deleted again. I will wait 24 hours to do this in case you have any further objections. Mat334 16:23, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
(Editorial Note: I reconfigured and made minor format changes–indents mostly–to the section created by
ttan entitled Columbia as an American Oxford, Verified which was in response to the initial post I made above in this section, and chose to combine it with into the one section for the sake of argument continuity. There is no need to create a new section everytime someone responds to an above section, and I thought the creation of a new section was superfluous and would potentially breed discontinuity. —
ExplorerCDT 19:17, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC))
As ExplorerCDT if you click on the name was apparently a "sock puppet" for a user who was banned from Wikipedia, and his strange editing activities are a decade old,I suggest restoring the reasonable, well researched, and useful passage on "Columbia as Oxford". Harrycroswell ( talk) 12:30, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
Hi, Doops here, the original creator of this article (i.e. List of colonial colleges; all further references in these two ¶s to "this" article refer to that article, whose history has been merged into this page's). In mid-November, User:ExplorerCDT started another article, Colonial Colleges (with unexplained capitalization), which basically borrowed much of the content of this article and put a different spin on it; a glance at the original first version of that article makes it clear that it was not written independently but was in fact based directly on this one. Today, ExplorerCDT has deleted this article's content and redirected it to his article, calling List of colonial colleges a "duplicate" of his/her article. This is a little high-handed, I must say. I realize that there is no "ownership" of articles in the wikipedia, and there's no sense in which this is "my" article; but I can't help feeling that ExplorerCDT's actions constitute something of an end-run around me and other users who have contributed to this article — instead of engaging us, he/she's created his/her own version and then deleted ours.
Furthermore, the two versions were not identical; and while I agree that there's no need for two articles on this subject, it's my opinion that this version had both a better title ("List of...") AND better content ("date first degrees granted" is solid and concrete in ways that "foundations" often aren't; integrating ancient schools and academies into the list is needlessly confusing). Now, that's just my opinion, and I have no right to impose it, which is why I didn't peremptorally delete ExplorerCDT's article back in November; I feel that he/she should have shown the same courtesy and, if bothered by the duplication, should have instituted a talk page discussion about the relative merits of the two articles and their titles. I have no stomach for a fight, so I'm not gonna start reverting; I'm just writing this rant for the sake of history. Doops 22:56, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I've merged the histories of the two articles. "Cut-and-paste" operations obscure the original authorship, and ought to be avoided. There is now just one article, with a combined history; the current content, however, will still have to be determined by the usual consensual editing practices. - Nunh-huh 00:10, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Shortly after the creation of the Virginia colony, the settlers sought to establish a school mostly intended to educate the Native Americans (mostly to christianize them). This effort was the first. Whether or not it was just a simple school or a college is another matter to be discussed, verified, etc. It was shortlived, because it closed up shortly after an Indian uprising in 1622. Is this worth researching for, or adding to, the article? — ExplorerCDT 19:14, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
See, here's the problem. While I'm sure at least a couple of these institutions had explicit religious ties (somebody help me out with an example), and at least Penn (and possibly others) was/were explicitly non-sectarian, most of them simply said nothing one way or the other. To take the example I know best, Harvard had no formal ties to the puritan church — indeed there was no such thing as the "puritan church." It was all just taken for granted in Massachusetts. How strong was the influence? Well, on the one hand Henry Dunster was forced to resign after admitting to anapedobaptist beliefs; on the other hand, students faced no religious test and the education was the traditional English University curriculum, certainly not a seminary's. Seen in this light, then, it seems a little unfair for Penn to claim "non-sectarian" status, despite its official avowal to that effect, since, like the other insitutions, it certainly had religious influence. Hence my proposed compromise wording. Doops 19:48, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Looks like the WikiNazis won out finally enforcing the naming conventions rule (with which some of us strenuously disagree) and lowercasing the word "colleges" in the article's title. — ExplorerCDT 15:37, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Nunh-huh reverted not only my change of the Collegiate School to the Collegiate School of Connecticut in this article, but my addition of the Collegiate School of Connecticut to the intro paragraph of Yale University. Please see Talk:Yale University for a discussion of this. – MementoVivere 02:38, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I guess "founded" is self-explanatory, but what is "chartered"? Can someone who knows add a definition of the two? Bbpen 18:18, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
After months of secret itching to do so, I've finally been bold and switched the name conventions back to a form not seen since this article's early days: the instituations are now listed by their colonial-era names with modern names being the afterthought. I have two main reasonings for this:
Please also note the explanatory sentence in the preceding ¶. Ta-da. Doops | talk 7 July 2005 06:27 (UTC)
Makes sense to me. But what about the second list ("Other colonial-era foundations")? Bbpen 7 July 2005 12:43 (UTC)
I removed the reference to William and Mary as a "public ivy." It is completely unrelated to its status as a colonial college. Also the "public ivies" aren't a formally recognized or even easily defined list. Bindingtheory 00:50, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Removed the public ivy reference again. It belongs on the College of William and Mary page, not the colonial college page. It is a random fact unrelated to the institution's status as a colonial college. The references to the ivy league itself make more sense here since the ivy league is a formally recognized group, and their association with one another as a league is directly related to the fact that they were nearly the only colleges in existence during their early history. - Bindingtheory 20:15, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
The only remotely neutral policy is to use the official date of founding as listed by the schools themselves. Harvard should be listed as 1636, Wm and Mary as 1693, Penn as 1740. Add a short footnote if further explanation is necessary. More detailed info should go in the articles on the actual schools. - Bindingtheory 18:53, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
The note explaining Penn’s founding was over 35% of the length of the text of the article itself (ie. Minus the charts and notes). I just don’t think that’s proportional to the importance of that subject in this article. The old version of the note has a basic explanation of the 1740, 1749, 1751 dates, and the 1755 charter is listed in the chart, so that a reader can make up his/her own mind on the topic, plus a wikilink back to the UPenn page, which goes into more detail. If further detail is necessary, then I think it belongs on the Penn page, which is explicitly about that institution. At least for now, I’m reverting it back to the old version of the footnote, with an additional statement that there is disagreement about the date, hopefully with discussion to follow here on the Talk page. - Bindingtheory 15:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
As someone who attended none of the universities listed, nor have ever been employed at any of them, I can only (neutrally) observe there is nothing neutral whatsoever in the founding dates listed by the schools themselves. The column on the table labeled "founded" should probably read "founding date from the university's web site as written by the current marketing department". Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Penn all played rather silly games trying to push back their founding dates - presumably for marketing purposes -- not just once, but thorough out their history. Yale's President Clap started this in 1765; Harvard has changed the date on its seal (!) several times. Presumably they figured no one would notice. In particular, using the founding of grammar "feeding" academies sometimes in the same town as the college as the start date is foolish; Connecticut, for example, had a law that required towns over 500 to have a grammar or secondary school; by 1756 there would be over sixty towns and theoretically 60 secondary schools in CT alone. Penn would not even get on the list by this criteria. The only data that matters is, indeed, as others have noted, the first instruction date. The table should be sorted by this date. Harrycroswell ( talk) 10:04, 18 July 2014 (UTC)
The second half of the first paragraph does little to explain "college" vs. "university" in these schools or in the U.S. in general. It is abstruse for readers unfamiliar with American terminology and mystifying for readers unfamiliar with anything else. That the schools changed their names is obvious from the table. I'm not sure why the issue needs to be addressed here anyway. "College" is the usual generic term for institutions of higher education in the U.S. A quick statement to this fact and a link to the article College would explain the situation.
The information at College#The origin of America's usage would be a benefit to this article to more fully treat the colonial colleges collectively. - Acjelen 05:51, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I like the two-column "founded/chartered" presentation and I like the current presentation of facts.
Of course... this still doesn't solve the problem of how to list them by "antiquity" since they are currently in order neither by if the institution's officially-claimed founding date (which would place Penn fourth) nor by date of charter (which would put Penn sixth, after Columbia!) Not doing anything about this... so long as the situation is clear and fairly presented to anyone who actually can manage to care about it, which it currently is. Dpbsmith (talk) 16:08, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
The best order would be that of earliest degrees granted. Harvard's, for example, was 1642. Doops | talk 20:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Brown's website says [1]:
Penn, however, says [2]
and refers to it as "nonsectarian" [3]:
These don't actually contradict each other, but I'm beginning to think there's something that needs to be looked into. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:39, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I graduated from Penn in 1988, and this is the first I've ever heard of Penn being connected to the Episcopalian Church in any way. As for the Quaker designation, yes, it's the nickname of the sports teams, but Quakers played no role in the founding of the school. Penn's secular foundation was consistent with Franklin's wish to teach practical subjects to students, in contrast with a curriculum of classical languages offered by such schools as Harvard and Yale.
St. John's College, as it now stands, is without religious affiliation. The new program, began in 1939. In the article, under religious influence, is listed "many Christian sects". The school is centered around the Great books of Western Civilization, and there are many religious authors on the program, including the old and new testaments of the Bible, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante, and countless others like Kierkegaard and Pascal who are clearly christians of their own kind. But, the school also reads hundreds of non-religious authors.
On their website, the school says "The College was founded in Annapolis in 1696 as King William's School and chartered in 1784 as St. John's College. A second campus was opened in 1964 in Santa Fe. St. John's is a four-year, co-educational, liberal arts college with no religious affiliation." I am not familiar with the schools religious influences before it became a great books school, but maybe you'll consider changing the entry or footnoting it like some of the others. Thanks.
Last time I looked at this topic, I was feeling rather irritated by the issue of Penn's trying to have it both ways (as represented by the presence of Whitefield and Franklin statues on campus). Dammit, if they wanna be 1740, they gotta be Episcopalian!
But on thinking about it some more, it seems to me that the most neutral thing to do, as with founding dates, is to use the institution's own self-description, which in the case of Penn is "nonsectarian," and add a clarifying (or clouding, as the case may be) annotation. Even though I think it's contradictory to claim a founding date of 1740 and a nonsectarian heritage, that is in fact exactly what Penn claims.
Now, as to the Quaker origin. What about that? Oddly, I did some fairly casual Googling and couldn't find any particular reference to the University of Pennsylvania as having being influenced by Quakerism. Obviously, Quakers were influential in everything going on in Philadelphia at the time, and, yes, I know what Penn's athletic teams are called... but Benjamin Franklin was not a Quaker, and our University of Pennsylvania article does not mention Quakers in other than an athletic context.
The Penn website's historical timeline of Penn in the age of Franklin doesn't mention Quakerism. William Smith, the first provost, was Anglican.
I notice too that despite Quakerism's historical respect for women, Penn seems to have been fairly late at being coeducational...
So, what's the case for saying that Penn had a Quaker affiliation at the time of its founding? Dpbsmith (talk) 18:01, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
P. S. Yes, I know that Penn, the person, himself, was a Quaker... but we are not talking about William Penn University (which, for the record, does in fact claim to have been "founded by Quaker pioneers in 1873" [7]) Dpbsmith (talk) 18:09, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
The section for "other" colonial foundations seems to be meant for current colleges and universities that descend from colonial academies. Therefore these two notes seem inappropriate and were removed:
"There is, however, 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. The school's charter, however, was repealed by Royal Proclamation due to the school's ties to the Presbyterian Church."
I cannot find an institution existing today that claims to be descended from this Queen's College. And:
"There is also the case of Georgetown University, whose history of teaching in the same location can be traced back to 1634 (see Note 7, below."
Without explaining that a colonial academy occupied the site and that it was transformed into Georgetown, this seems inaccurate and at any rate superfluous, since it's covered in the note.
1dell1 21:07, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
No sources are provided for the assertion that Jesuit teaching began in 1634, nor for any "controversy" about the founding date. Georgetown's website gives a founding date of 1789, describes Georgetown's history as extending "from 1789 to the present," and mentions no dates earlier than 1784, when founder Fr. John Carroll was appointed Superior to the American Mission. [9]
Material suggesting an earlier "founding" should not be placed in the article without a good, verifiable supporting reference. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:30, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I am disputing the claim that Rutgers and W&M were asked to join the Ivy League but declined. William & Mary was a public university at the time, and had been for a long time. The Ivy League, in contrast, was purposefully made up of private schools. W&M also had never played Yale in football, had only played Princeton 1 time in 80 years of the sport, etc. It had no rivalry with any of these schools. While Rutgers did enjoy a football rivalry with Princeton at the time, Rutgers had just merged with the University of Newark and so was a very large university with branches in different geographic locations... it would be hard to see them being asked as well. I find it highly doubtful. Also, would not one writer in the Internet Age have written an article lamenting the fact that one of these schools did not accept the invitation? ExplorerCDT cited numerous rolls of microfilm as his "source", saying that if he had to list an article, it would be a list of over 500 and too lengthy. He has consistently avoided the question as to why he can't list just one or two articles with actual dates, that someone could easily verify. Until specific articles with specific dates can be listed and verified, I am disputing the accuracy of these claims. Wise 13:01, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Please use Ivy League (talk) to discuss this issue. Uris 13:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, this article either needs to cover colonial colleges across the world, such as those that existed in the UK, or it needs to move to a more appropriate page name to allow for such an article to exist. I did flag this issue with {{ worldview}}, but it has been removed, so I'll reinstate until a consensus can be reached -- Ratarsed ( talk) 20:54, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
The source provided states that Pittsburgh Academy (the elementary forerunner to the University of Pittsburgh) was founded in 1786 and chartered the following year. This source also mentions "a school...beginning probably in 1770" but this is too vague, uncertain and unverifiable (see How to Use Sources). Other sources given show various other dates but none mention that same date or anything within ten years of it. Additionally, a cursory view of the university's webpage will also reveal no official claim to any date before 1786. As a result, and unless another source mentioned this date clearly, this cannot be held as a widely accept date and must not be included according to WP policy. No matter how hard you try to shoehorn your institution as a colonial-era related institution it simply does not fit. If you have a problem with this, I suggest you open an RfC or provide another source that clearly supports your proposition. Anubis3 ( talk) 08:14, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
Please fix the article. The same style of numbering is used in both the explanatory notes and the reference footnotes. Racepacket ( talk) 11:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
With these two edits, User:Sammy Houston has turned this article back into a kludge (i.e. "An ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole"), with bizarre templates in the "See also" section and paragraph after paragraph outlining each college's claims to being a "Colonial College." I believe that this is the wrong way to go, and I invite users to discuss those changes. Instead, I believe that this article should return to this state, which is more list-like. Any other comments -- GrapedApe ( talk) 03:24, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
Disagreement with recent deletions. Thanks for your message, GrapedApe. What on earth is a "Kludge"? Why do a number of Wikipedia users invent esoteric terms to codify their subjective tastes? That's simply bizarre. This is not a computer science or neuroscience or aerospace related article. This article concerns colonial history. If anyone can find a reference to a "kludge" in a serious discussion of colonial American history, please share it with us. I did not create this article or add the synoposes of histories for the colleges. I added to some of those synopses. I recommend that the synopses be restored because they add useful and interesting depth to this article as well as content that may not be available in the articles concerning the respective colleges. This is not a question of supporting claims of these colleges to being viewed as colonial colleges but, rather, providing readers with some basic information about significant colonial era events, personalities and principles that led to the unique considerations surrounding the foundation of each of the 9 colleges.
As an aside, I notice that both of the above commenters appear to have affiliations with universities that are not featured in this article. That may explain why the relevance of some of the historical content is not apparent. As for the suggestion of "superfluous" portals, the Calvinism portal is very much relevant to this article as covered above in the discussion of the Puritanism of several of the founders of many of the colonial colleges, the colonies in which those colleges were founded and the creeds celebrated, practiced and enforced in the early colonial years of several of these colleges. Also, there's a difference between baptism and Baptists. Baptists played a unique role in American history in promoting religious and academic freedom through the King Charles II charter for the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Conversely, British loyalists played a noteworthy role in restraining independent currents at King's College in New York.
I recommend that the synoposes be restored and maintained and that the portals relevant to the religious institutional underpinnings and roots of each of the colonial colleges be restored for clarity and relevant information. That is vital for understanding the historical evolution of each of the colleges to their very different contemporary institutional identities.
If anyone wants to pore over http://pike.services.brown.edu/bamco/bamco.php?eadid=ms-1e-1 and figure out at what point between 1770 and 1779 the "Rhode Island College" moniker was officially adopted, more power to you. In 1773, Manning was the president of the College or University in blah blah blah. In 1772, a list of worthy recipients of degrees from Rhode Island College was proposed. In 1775, the corporation referred to it as "the College in the Colony of Rhode Island". In 1776, there was a vote by the "Fellows and Trustees of Rhode Island College". In 1780, there's an advertisement for "the College in this Town". I give up. :-) -- SarekOfVulcan (talk)
Should a short section be added for what happened to Colonial American colleges in the 13 states during the Revolutionary War? A lot of people assume that the Colonial period ended in 1783, not 1776. Technically, the period seems to be defined in Wikipedia's article Colonial history of the United States as anything relating to the modern territory of the USA from 1492 to July 4, 1776 -- but other parts of Wikipedia such as the Timeline of Colonial America referenced in that same article seem to extended it to 1783. In fact, the British occupied most of the colleges at one point. The entire country was not fully "American" until the British pulled out of NYC. The Wikipedia timelines notes, "1783 – September: Britain signs the Treaty of Paris, recognizing American independence. November 25: The British evacuate New York, marking the end of British rule, and General George Washington triumphantly returns with the Continental Army." A section on what the war did to the colleges might be of interest (most of them closed for a period of time). Also, what happened to the College of Philadelphia during the war, its confiscation by the Republic of Pennsylvania and renaming, and the founding of two new colleges in wartime by Provost William Smith could be mentioned, though the two colleges might be left off of the table. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Harrycroswell ( talk • contribs) 14:17, 24 July 2014 (UTC)
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The result of the move request was: moved to Colonial colleges. No prejudice against a new RM arguing the merits of whether it should be a plural or not, but clearly there is a consensus to move away from the "list of" format. Jenks24 ( talk) 16:10, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
List of Colonial Colleges →
Colonial colleges – Article has background on the topic, not just a list, and there is no other actual article about that topic. Article also includes content about associated topics or groupings, which is suitable if this article is about the grouping but not if this article is only a list of the group's members. Alternative title is singular
Colonial college, not sure which is better. I'm not doing it
WP:BOLDly because there was previously an attempt at writing an articel about the group after this list-of article existed. That one got merged into here rather than vice versa, want to make sure that wasn't just a chronological/avoidance-of-
WP:CONTENTFORKING solution.
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