Middlebury College history

One student named Aaron Petty graduated at the first commencement held in August 1802.

At its second commencement in 1804, Middlebury granted Lemuel Haynes an honorary master's degree, the first advanced degree ever bestowed upon an African American.

He initially planned to become a minister but instead studied law at Middlebury College (Vermont), from which he graduated in 1813.

In 1817 Nelson was admitted to the bar and moved to Cortland, N.Y., to begin private practice.

In recognition of his gift, West College, a new building completed a few years prior to Painter's death in 1819, was renamed Painter Hall.

Although he was not the first choice—several candidates had been nominated, but all had either refused service or had been denied confirmation by the Senate—he easily won confirmation by the Senate in March 1845.

Nelson retired from the court in November 1872 and died the following year.

Women were first admitted in 1883.

The first female graduate—May Belle Chellis—received her degree in 1886.

As valedictorian of the class of 1899, Mary Annette Anderson became the first African-American woman elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Older (pre-1900) and rare material is shelved in Special Collections, including early Vermont Maps, Vermont Postcards, the Bailey Collection of Vermont Pamphlets (in Midcat), the Rutland Railroad Archives and the Crown Point Road Archives.

The national fraternity Kappa Delta Rho was founded in Painter Hall on May 17, 1905.

The German Language School, founded in 1915 under the supervision of then-President John Martin Thomas, began the tradition of the Middlebury College Language Schools.

The Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury's graduate school of English, was established at the college's Bread Loaf Mountain campus in 1920.

Middlebury President Paul Dwight Moody began the American tradition of a National Christmas Tree in 1923 when the college donated a 48-foot balsam fir for use at the White House.

The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference was established in 1926.

The C.V. Starr-Middlebury Schools Abroad began in 1949 with the school in Paris; they now host students at 38 sites in Argentina, Brazil, China, Cameroon, Chile, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Italy, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, Russia, Spain, and Uruguay.

In 1978, the Bread Loaf School of English expanded to include a campus at Lincoln College, Oxford University.

In 1992, John M. McCardell Jr. was elected by the Board of Trustees as the 15th president of Middlebury College.

In May 2004, an anonymous benefactor made a $50 million donation to Middlebury.

In 2005, Middlebury signed an affiliation agreement with the Monterey Institute of International Studies, a graduate school in Monterey, California.

On June 30, 2010, the Monterey Institute was officially designated as a graduate school of Middlebury College.

The plan came as a result of generations of student activism, particularly on the part of the Divest Middlebury campaign, an initiative founded in 2012 by the Middlebury Sunday Night Environmental Group (SNEG).

As of July 2014, Middlebury's endowment stood at approximately $1 billion.