Rhode Island College:  The first chancellor of Brown University was Stephen Hopkins.

     Roger Williams and his followers in 1638 built the First Baptist Church in America.

     When the Baptists were ready to start a college in Rhode Island, they endorsed James Manning's plan for a "liberal and catholic" institution, grounded in interdenominational cooperation.  Ezra Stiles, Congregationalist clergyman in Newport (and later president of Yale), and attorney William Ellery, Jr., were asked to draw up a charter based on Manning's draft, which was presented to the General Assembly. It divided the Corporation's power among Baptists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists (same thing) who would be a majority of the Fellows, a few slots for Quakers and Anglicans, and a few un-allotted.    
   The Baptists disapproved of the charter because they wanted a more powerful say in how the College operated. Subsequent drafts gave the college presidency and a majority of the Fellows permanently to the control of the Baptists. They were given an even larger majority of the Trustees, and the Anglicans were promoted above the Congregationalists in number of allotted seats.
     The college's mission was to prepare men with a useful and respectable life through learning.  It provided equality for "Youths of all Religious Denominations," and that "into this Liberal & Catholic Institution shall never be admitted any Religious Tests."
     The newly formed Rhode Island College started with no funds, building, students, or faculty.  At the first meeting in 1764, the Corporation's mission was to raise money, which it did.  Benjamin Franklin participated.  At its second meeting a year later, the Corporation named as president the Reverend James Manning.  He was Brown's first president and first professor simultaneously.
    As the college settled, the tyranny of Britain upon America began to mount. The last Commencement until after the Revolution was held in 1776 in the newly completed First Baptist Church. In December 1776, the British seized Newport; and the college was forced to shut down. Within eight days after the American troops vacated the college in April 1780, it was learned that the College Edifice was to be a hospital for French troops.
    In 1782, the French troops left the College, leaving it in shambles.  The Corporation submitted a $4,400 bill to the new federal government to cover damages.  Eighteen years later, the college was reimbursed $2,779.13 for its occupancy by American troops alone.
    With funds scarce, the Corporation took hope in a rumor that the king of France had offered aid to Yale for its rebuilding and that Yale declined.  The Corporation thought France, America's ally during the Revolution, might want to help their situation.  They sent a formal request to Benjamin Franklin, then minister at the French court, from whom they received no reply.  Two years later, in 1786, the Corporation renewed its request through Thomas Jefferson, the new minister to France.  Jefferson suggested they drop their request as his preliminary inquiries had met with no encouragement.
     In September 1782, changes were made to reflect independence from England and the shift from colonial status.  In 1783, John Brown offered to pay half the cost of a "compleat Philosophical Apparatus and Library," which the Corporation accepted.  "Philosophical apparatus" included telescopes, microscopes, globes, magnets, etc. - used in studying the natural sciences, which in those days went under the heading of "natural philosophy."   
   
    The first post-Revolutionary Commencement was held in 1786, when a class of fifteen (including Nicholas Brown, Jr.) was awarded degrees. The Commencement ceremony turned into the first public holiday for the town people whose enthusiasm sometimes turned quite rowdy.  In 1790, soon after Rhode Island became the last state to ratify the Constitution, the Corporation recruited the Baptist Society to calm down the crowd and do away with the sale of liquor at the ceremonies.  1790's Commencement awarded an honorary degree to George Washington, who had visited a few weeks earlier to give his blessings to the new state of Rhode Island.  That Commencement was also the last at which Manning presided.  He died of a stroke the next year at the age of fifty-two.
     Nicholas Brown, Jr., a trustee by age twenty-two, had established the firm of Brown & Ives, which became one of New England's largest mercantile houses.  He shared his success with others, giving Brown University $160,000 over his lifetime.  Francis Wayland said of him, "He was endowed to an unusual degree with that quality, which I know not how better to express than by the term, largeness of mind.  A plan or an enterprise was attractive to him, all things being equal, in proportion to its extensiveness."  According to Wayland, he had a large heart as well, full of "active sympathy for every form of human suffering.  He not infrequently visited the sick in their own dwellings, while his door was frequently thronged, and his steps waylaid by the poor and unfortunate of every age."   He served continuously as a trustee and then a fellow of the University until his death in 1841. Taken from Public Affairs and University Relations, Brown University Providence, Rhode Island 02912 USA  

 "The afflicted and the eccentric from various quarters, Antinomians, Quakers, `Seekers,' and Anabaptists of all stripes, had lived here together in tumultuous amity, attacking one another's heresies but steadily respecting everybody's right to preach heresy without any restraint from the civil power...."  From "A History of Brown University," Walter Bronson, 1914.