Rector Cutler's Administration, 1719-22 Rector Williams's Administration, 1725-39 President Clap's Administration, 1739-66 Dr. Daggett's Administration, 1766–77 President Stiles's Administration, 1777-95 President Dwight's Administration, 1795-1817 President Day's Administration, 1817-46. President Woolsey's Administration, 1846-71 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF YALE UNIVERSITY The Founding and the Founders, 1701 IN 1700 New England contained nearly 100,000 white inhabitants. The needs of this scattered community in the way of higher education were supplied by HARVARD COLLEGE, at Cambridge, founded in 1636 by graduates of English Universities. No other seat of learning graced the British Colonies in America, except the infant College of William and Mary, chartered in 1693. Massachusetts Bay was naturally the chief patron of Harvard; yet, in proportion to her means and numbers, the sister Colony of Connecticut bore her full share in support of the enterprise. But the two commonwealths diverged to some extent in their theological and political development; and though these diverging tendencies were not glaringly apparent, and need not be emphasized further, they are sufficient, together with the natural considerations of distance and independent life, to explain the movement in the third generation for a separate College in Connecticut. The first distinct traces of this movement appear in the early summer of the year 1701, in the neighborhood of NEW HAVEN, which had had a dream -dating back to its very foundation-of a College of its own. The chief promoter of the new enterprise was the Rev. JAMES PIERPONT, pastor of the New Haven Church, a Harvard graduate of 1681; while his most trusted coadjutor was the Rev. ABRAHAM PIERSON (Harvard 1668), of Killingworth, now Clinton. There is evidence of careful consultation together in this same summer on the part of these clergymen and sundry of their ministerial neighbors, especially those in the coast towns of the Colony; and also of advice sought from leading laymen elsewhere in Connecticut, and of both ministers and laymen in Boston and Cambridge. Tradition describes a meeting of a few of these Connecticut pastors at BRANFORD, the next town east of New Haven, about the last of September, 1701, and implies that, to constitute a company of founders, those then met gave (or more probably, for themselves and in the name of their most active associates, agreed to give) a collection of books, as the foundation for a College in the Colony. It is otherwise known that after the date which must be assigned to this meeting, the details as to a |