Colby College history

Chaplin arrived in Waterville in the summer of 1818 with his family and seven students, including George Dana Boardman, the institution's first graduate.

After Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820, the first Maine legislature affirmed the Massachusetts charter for the institution, but made significant changes.

A turning point, the Maine Literary and Theological Institution was renamed Waterville College on February 5, 1821.

In 1822, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, who would become a celebrated martyr to emancipation and to freedom of the press, graduated as valedictorian.

In 1833, inspired by William Lloyd Garrison's lecture in Waterville, Colby students founded an Anti-Slavery Society of Waterville College.

The University of Durham was founded in 1837 as an Oxford-model campus with several colleges for residence and teaching; it later acquired affiliate colleges elsewhere—some in British colonies.

However, the faculty at the college did not ratify the formation of the society until 1858, only a few years before the Civil War began.

Richard Cutts Shannon (Colby 1862) to be a workplace for the physicist William Rogers, who agreed to come to Waterville from his position at Harvard.

On January 23, 1867, the college was renamed Colby University in gratitude.

Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., opened in 1868 and was the first American university to be divided into colleges offering different degrees.

Trustees of the college voted to construct a library and chapel to honor the Colby men who died in the war, called the Memorial Hall; it was dedicated at the commencement of 1869.

Women were first admitted in 1871.

The national Sigma Kappa sorority was founded at Colby in 1874 by the college's first five female students.

One of the buildings is named after the first woman to attend, Mary Caffrey Low, who was the valedictorian of the Class of 1875.

When Johns Hopkins University opened in 1876, it was divided administratively into an undergraduate college and a graduate school.

Students published the first issue of The Colby Echo in 1877.

But English universities founded after 1879—commonly called “red brick” universities—have no colleges.

Adam Simpson Green, Colby College in Waterville, 1887 / Colby College Special Collections

In 1893, the Higgins Classical Institute was also deeded to Colby - the last preparatory school that the university would acquire.

On January 25, 1899, Colby president Nathaniel Butler Jr. '73, renamed the "university" Colby College.

Marion Osborne, Colby 1900, was Colby's first black female graduate.

Franklin W. Johnson was appointed president of the college in June 1929.

Ultimately, a joint effort between Waterville citizens and the college raised more than $100,000 to purchase 600 acres (2.4 km) near the outskirts of the city on Mayflower Hill, and the deed was presented to the college on April 12, 1931.

In 1937, according to master plans drawn up by Jens Fredrick Larson, construction broke ground on Lorimer Chapel, the first building on the new Mayflower Hill campus.

Women students moved to the Hill first, and some classes were held in Runnals Union beginning in the fall of 1942.

Miller Library was ready for partial use in the spring of 1947.

Renowned organist E. Power Biggs performed the first public concert in 1950.

In 1951, the last class took place on the old campus in Coburn Hall.

The lion was brought to Miller Library from Memorial Hall in January 1962.

Colby College Press, Waterville, Maine 1963.

Colby installed its first computer in 1975 - a DEC PDP-11/50 in the Lovejoy Building.

1983: The first college to issue e-mail accounts to all students

Smith, Earl H., "Mayflower Hill: A History of Colby College" (2006). Colby Books.

In April 2013 Colby became one of only four colleges or universities in the country, and the first among our peers, to achieve carbon neutrality.

On July 1, 2014, David A. Greene took office as the new president of the college.