Brown was founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (more commonly known as Rhode Island College) in Providence, Rhode Island. A private, research university, it is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and a distinguished member of the Ivy League. It was founded, at the outset, as a university unlike many of their peer schools who were initially preparatory schools which became colleges. Brown its charter to Ezra Stiles who would go on to become one of Yale’s most famous Presidents and to the Baptist community of Rhode Island who sought an institution at which its members could study and practice their faith free from persecution. Whilst Brown was established explicitly as a school which would admit students regardless of their religious background (which at the time was a rather a reference to whichever Protestant church a student may hail from), the Baptists of the Rhode Island were concerned that they did not have a tertiary level institution of their own, or at the very least, one which would not discriminate against admitting them. Thus, Brown had a reputation as being a Baptist school although the school is very much non-sectarian today. The university was initially based in Warren, a town south of Providence, before Moses Brown donated some of his family’s lands to the college to support its relocation in 1770. It is for him and his family that the college was renamed in 1804 following a further donation to support the school’s endowment.
