Duke University - Chanticleer Yearbook (Durham, NC)

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clA nrief History of DUKE UNIVERSITY . ITS ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT . . . EARLY DAYS . . . GLANCES AT THE VICISSITUDES AND ROMANCE OF THIS RENOWNED INSTITUTION AND ITS MAGNIFICENT MARCH OF ACHIEVE- MENT TOGETHER WITH MANY RARE ILLUSTRATIONS THAT BRING BACK AN INTERESTING PAST JN the 1830 ' s the people of North Carolina became conscious of the need for establishing colleges and other institutions of higher learning in the State. Just as Wake Forest, Davidson, Guilford, and several other colleges were founded about this time, what was later to become the Duke University that we know today had its beginnings in 1838. Brantley York, a picturesque pioneer preacher and teacher, was engaged in 1838 by a group of people of Randolph County, North Carolina, to teach a school for them on a subscription basis in a small dilapidated building which had been known since about 1835 as Brown ' s Schoolhouse. During the winter of 1838-39 efforts were begun by the Methodists and Quakers for better school facilities for their children, and as a result, at a small meeting early in 1839 there was organized what was called the Union Insti- need of tute Educational Society, and a permanent school to be known as Union Institute Academy was the result. This marked the origin of what was later to become Trinity College and Duke University. Shortly before this time a larger building had been provided, but even this new one was not large enough to accommodate the students. Another two-room structure about thirty-five by sixty-five feet in size was built, and in 1841 the School A SCHOOL

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Statue of fVashingtori Duke, oti the East Campus

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THE QUAKERS WERE IRRECON- CILABLE . . . BRANTLEY YORK was incorporated by the General Assembly of North Carolina. It was a high-grade common school, prosperous, and well patronized by the people of the neighborhood. But one day the Methodists made sport over the thee and thou of the Quakers, and the result was the upsetting of the harmony so long en- joyed between the two groups. The trouble was irreconcilable; and this action offers a good example of the great part which trifles sometimes play in the shaping of great undertakings. A falling-off in the number of students by reason of the Quaker secession necessitated a reorganization of some kind to insure the continued prosper- ity of Union Institute Academy; and so it was that in 1841 Braxton Craven came as assistant teacher. He was young, only nineteen, and not a finished scholar, but he was an untiring student. Perhaps York felt that his own work was finished there, but whatever the reason, he left the Institute in the hands of young Craven in 1842. Thereupon, Craven became principal of the school and developed it into a successful institution. On account of the founding of Greensboro Female College, Craven converted the Insti- tute into a male school. The Academy enjoyed ex- traordinary success and usefulness not only because the principal was untiring in his industry but also because he had the hearty cooperation of the people of the community, who boarded his students at the lowest possible figures. This condition, together with very low tuition rates, made higher education available to almost everyone who genuinely sought it. York had made a better beginning than he knew; he was a pioneer of educational enterprises. But