History of Duke University

The history of Duke University began when Brown's Schoolhouse, a private subscription school in Randolph County, North Carolina (in the present-day town of Trinity), was founded in 1838. The school was renamed to Union Institute Academy in 1841, Normal College in 1851, and to Trinity College in 1859. Finally moving to Durham in 1887, the school grew rapidly, primarily due to the generosity of Washington Duke and Julian S. Carr, powerful and respected Methodists who had grown wealthy through the tobacco industry. In 1924, Washington Duke's son, James B. Duke, established The Duke Endowment, a $40 million (about $430 million in 2005 dollars) trust fund, some of which was to go to Trinity College. The president thus renamed the school Duke University, as a memorial to Washington Duke and his family.

Read more about History Of Duke University:  Beginnings: 1841-1886, Move To Durham: 1887-1900, Bassett Affair: 1903, Blue Devils: 1922, Birth of Duke University: 1924-1938, Expansion and Growth: 1939-1992, Recent History: 1993-present, Sustainability, Important Dates, Timeline

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    The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.
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    Hume’s doctrine was that the circumstances vary, the amount of happiness does not; that the beggar cracking fleas in the sunshine under a hedge, and the duke rolling by in his chariot; the girl equipped for her first ball, and the orator returning triumphant from the debate, had different means, but the same quantity of pleasant excitement.
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    The university must be retrospective. The gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiquity.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)