Duke University

Duke started as Brown's Schoolhouse, a private subscription school founded in 1837, in Randolph County in the present-day town of Trinity. Brown's Schoolhouse was organized by the Union Institute Society, a group of Methodists and Quakers, and in 1841 North Carolina issued a charter for Union Institute Academy. The academy was renamed Normal College in 1851 and then Trinity College in 1859 because of support from the Methodist Church. In 1892, Trinity moved to Durham, largely due to generosity from Washington Duke and Julian S. Carr, powerful and respected Methodists who had grown wealthy through the tobacco industry. Washington Duke gave what was then known as Trinity College a $100,000 endowment in 1896, with the stipulation that the college "open its doors to women, placing them on an equal footing with men."