Brown University: Foundation, Funding, and Early Teaching

Brown University's predecessor was a college founded in the British colony of Rhode Island. The act of 1764 provided corporate status, governing bodies, and degree-granting powers. College enrollment beginning in 1765 was a separate stage translating law into teaching. The official charter compilation specifically explains that a later parchment copy dated 1765 should not be mistaken for the foundation, which belongs to 1764.

James Manning moved to Warren in spring 1764 and opened a Latin school preparing pupils for college, subsequently becoming the local Baptist minister. Manning's admission register, reproduced in Guild's history, records William Rogers of Newport entering on September 3, 1765 as the first college student. The first commencement in 1769 was a third stage; the three years are not interchangeable.

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The original charter did not design a secular institution. It created thirty-six trustees and twelve fellows, allocating seats by denomination. Baptists held majorities in both bodies, and the president also had to be Baptist. These eighteenth-century provisions should not directly describe every later period of the university.

At the same time, the charter admitted young people of different religious backgrounds and guaranteed students' liberty of conscience. Teachers were restricted to Protestants, but public instruction was not to center on denominational controversies; private religious instruction was not wholly excluded. Open admission and denominational control of governance thus coexisted, showing the specific institutional boundaries of toleration.

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In 1765, the governing body formally appointed Manning president and assigned him professorial duties in languages and other subjects. David Howell joined the teaching the following year. The college was initially very small, with overlapping presidential, teaching, and ministerial roles. Powers enumerated in a charter did not mean complete departments and staffing already existed.

On September 7, 1769, seven students took part in the first commencement at Warren. Guild reproduces a program including a Latin address, philosophical disputation, an oration on benevolence, and a debate on whether Americans should seek independence under existing conditions. Classical languages, reasoning, and public questions shared one occasion. The program indicates educational orientation, but cannot alone reconstruct a complete four-year curriculum.

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The college needed sustained fundraising, not merely permission to exist. Morgan Edwards traveled to Britain and Ireland in 1767 seeking donations, while Hezekiah Smith sought support in South Carolina and Georgia. A formal certificate issued to Edwards in 1769 specified that interest on European funds was intended for the president's salary. This use of capital for long-term income should be distinguished from one-time construction spending.

Brown's 2006 Slavery and Justice report places fundraising within the Atlantic economy, documenting gifts from Southern plantation owners, merchants, and people engaged in the slave trade. It also explicitly states that the proportion of founding funds traceable to slavery cannot be calculated precisely. Different donations combined to support the institution, but available evidence does not justify an arbitrary exact percentage.

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In 1770, the college moved toward Providence and began the building later called University Hall. Robert Emlen's examination of construction accounts and subscription records shows supporters meeting pledges not only with money but also timber, lime, transport, and labor. Building drew on merchants, artisans, household property, and local credit together, rather than one donor paying everything.

Accounts include both free and enslaved workers. Using names, status descriptions, and the recipients of payments, Emlen identifies Pero and a worker enslaved by Mary Young as enslaved, while two others' status remains uncertain. Ten days of labor were credited to Young's account. Even similar recorded daily rates cannot establish that enslaved people received equal payment or controlled their own labor.

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Teaching resources remained limited after the move. In a February 21, 1772 letter to Thomas Llewelyn in London, Manning described roughly 250 volumes, not all well suited to requirements, and asked for books and experimental apparatus. The college history also records the Providence Library Company's permission for teachers and students to use its holdings without charge. A library thus grew through purchases, outside borrowing, and overseas gifts.

A 1771 letter from Joseph D. Russell listed books sent to the college, including algebra, moral philosophy, and Milton. Such lists make knowledge exchange concrete in senders, subjects, and places of use. During the War of Independence, teaching stopped and books went to Wrentham, Massachusetts for safekeeping; arrangements for their return followed in 1782. Preserving and reassembling books was also practical work sustaining educational continuity.

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