University of Georgia

Antebellum history Lyman Hall , one of the founders of the University of Georgia In 1784, Lyman Hall , a Yale University graduate [ 14 ] and one of three medical doctors to sign the Declaration of Independence , [ 15 ] as Governor of Georgia persuaded the Georgia legislature to grant 40,000 acres (160 km 2 ) as an endowment for the purposes of founding a "college or seminary of learning." Besides Hall, credit for founding the university goes to Abraham Baldwin who wrote the original charter for University of Georgia. [ 16 ] Originally from Connecticut , Baldwin graduated from and later taught at Yale before moving to Georgia . [ 17 ] The Georgia General Assembly approved Baldwin's charter on January 27, 1785, [ 16 ] and the University of Georgia became the first university in the United States to gain a state charter. [ 18 ] [ 19 ] Considered one of the Founding Fathers of the United States , Baldwin would later represent Georgia in the 1786 Constitutional Convention that created the Constitution of the United States [ 20 ] and go on to be President pro tempore of the United States Senate . [ 21 ] The task of creating the university was given to the Senatus Academicus, [ 16 ] which consisted of the Board of Visitors – made up of "the governor, all state senators, all superior court judges and a few other public officials" – and the Board of Trustees, "a body of 14 appointed members that soon became self-perpetuating." [ 17 ] The first meeting of the university's board of trustees was held in Augusta, Georgia , on February 13, 1786. The meeting installed Baldwin as the university's first president. [ 16 ] Abraham Baldwin , one of the founders and first president of the University of Georgia For the first 16 years of the school's history, the University of Georgia only existed on paper. [ 22 ] By the new century, a committee was appointed to find suitable land to establish a campus.

Committee member John Milledge purchased 633 acres of land on the west bank of the Oconee River and immediately gave it to the university. This tract of land, now a part of the consolidated city–county of Athens-Clarke County, Georgia , was then part of Jackson County . [ 23 ] [ 24 ] As of 2013 [ update ] , 37 acres of that land remained as part of the North Campus. [ 23 ] [ 25 ] Because Baldwin was elected to the U.S. Senate , the school needed a new president. Baldwin chose his former student and fellow professor at Yale, Josiah Meigs , as his replacement. Meigs became the school's president, as well as the first and only professor. After traveling the state to recruit a few students, Meigs opened the school with no building in the fall of 1801. The first school building patterned after Yale's Connecticut Hall was built the year later. Yale's early influence on the new university extended into the classical curriculum with emphasis on Latin and Greek . [ 23 ] By 1803, the students formed a debate society, Demosthenian Literary Society . [ 26 ] Meigs had his first graduating class of nine by 1804. [ 23 ] In 1806, the school dedicated the first legacy building, Franklin College (named after Benjamin Franklin ). The building is now known as Old College. [ 26 ] After the tenure of the next two presidents, John Brown (1811–1816) and Robert Finley (1817), [ 27 ] a timeframe that saw enrollment drop, presidents Moses Waddel (1819–1829) and Alonzo Church (1829–1859) worked to re-engage new students. By 1859, enrollment had risen to 100 students, and the university employed eight faculty members and opened a new law school. [ 28 ] During this timeframe, the university erected the New College building followed by the Chapel in 1832. [ 26 ] Church was the longest-serving president in UGA history. [ 29 ] In 1859, the state legislature abolished the Senatus Academicus, leaving the board of trustees as the only official governing body. When Church retired, [ 30 ] Andrew A.

Lipscomb was appointed to the newly renamed position of chancellor in 1860. [ 28 ]

The University of Georgia closed in September 1863 due to the Civil War and reopened in January 1866 with an enrollment of about 80 students [ 31 ] including veterans using an award of $300 granted by the General Assembly to former soldiers under an agreement that they would remain in Georgia as teachers after graduation. [ 32 ] [ 28 ] The university received additional funding through the 1862 Morrill Act , which was used to create land-grant colleges across the nation. In 1872, the $243,000 federal allotment to Georgia was invested to create a $16,000 annual income used to establish the Georgia State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (A&M), initially separate and independent from the University of Georgia. However, A&M's funding was considered part of the university, which helped save it from bankruptcy during the Reconstruction era . [ 28 ] As a land-grant school, UGA was required to provide military training, which the university began to offer in the 1870s. [ 33 ] Several of the university's extracurricular organizations began in the late 1800s. In 1886, fraternities at UGA began publishing the school's yearbook, the Pandora . The same year, the university gained its first intercollegiate sport when a baseball team was formed, followed by a football team formed in 1892. Both teams played in a small field west of campus now known as Herty Field . The Demosthenian and Phi Kappa literary societies together formed the student paper, The Red & Black , in 1883. [ 33 ] In 1894, the University of Georgia joined six other southeastern schools to form the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA). [ 34 ]