The University of Georgia was incorporated on January 27, 1785, by the Georgia General Assembly, which had given its trustees, the Senatus Academicus of the University of Georgia, 40,000 acres (160 km²) for the purposes of founding a “college or seminary of learning.”[6] The Senatus Academicus was composed of the Board of Visitors and the Board of Trustees with the Georgia Senate presiding over those two boards. The first meeting of the university's board of trustees was held in Augusta, Georgia on February 13, 1786.[7] The meeting installed its first president, Abraham Baldwin, a native of Connecticut and graduate of Yale University. The college was not immediately established and until it was portions of the original land tracts were used for other purposes or sold to raise $7,463.75 by 1798.
On July 2, 1799, the Senatus Academicus met again in Louisville, Georgia and decided that the time was right to officially begin the University. During this meeting 633 acres (2.6 km²) on the banks of the Oconee River were chosen on which the university was to be built. This tract of land, now a part of the consolidated city–county of Clarke County, Georgia and Athens, Georgia was then part of Jackson County. The meeting also established a new president of the university naming Josiah Meigs, another Yale graduate, to the post. The first classes were held in 1801, in what was called the Franklin College, named in honor of Benjamin Franklin. The first graduating class graduated on May 31, 1804.
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