History of Duke University | History 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.

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