Colby–Sawyer College

Colby–Sawyer College is a private, comprehensive liberal arts college situated on a campus in New London, in the Lake Sunapee region of New Hampshire, founded as a coeducational academy in 1837.

History

New London Academy

A legislative charter was granted by the State of New Hampshire in 1837 to 11 New London citizens for the purpose of establishing a school in the town. The eleven men who were named as the academy’s incorporators were Joseph Colby, Anthony Colby, Perley Burpee, Jonathan Greeley, John Brown, Jonathan Herrick, David Everett, Samuel Carr, Walter Flanders, Jonathan Addison, and Marshall Trayne.

It was a coeducational secondary school, for which Susan Colby served as the first teacher and principal. It opened with a student body of 26 girls and one boy, but soon enrolled 54 more male students.

In 1858 the New Hampton Literary and Theological Institution moved to Fairfax, Vermont, and the New Hampshire Baptists, with encouragement from former Governor Anthony Colby and New London’s Baptist minister, Ebenezer Dodge, assumed responsibility for the Academy. The name was changed to the New London Literary and Scientific Institute. The new Board of Trustees was made up of twenty-four members, three-fourths of whom had to be from New Hampshire but not from New London and three-fourths of whom also had to be Baptists in good standing.

New London Literary and Scientific Institution

In 1854, the Ladies Boarding House (later called Heidelberg) was...
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