Colby-Sawyer College Timeline

July 4, 1837
A legislative charter is granted by the State of New Hampshire 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.

1837
Five acres are purchased by Anthony Colby, Perley Burpee, John Brown, and Walter Flanders for the Academy Building.  A public subscription was initiated to pay for the building and the New London townspeople contributed $1,000.

May 1838
New London Academy, a coeducational secondary school, welcomed its first students.  It opens with a student body of twenty six young ladies and one ten year old boy.  Susan Colby, daughter of  Anthony Colby, is the first teacher and lady principal.

Fall 1838
Fifty four male students join the Academy under the tutelage of the male principal, Dyer Sanborn.

1853
The New Hampton Literary and Theological Institution moves to Fairfax Vermont and the New Hampshire Baptists, with encouragement from former Governor Anthony Colby and New London’s Baptist minister, Ebenezer Dodge, assume responsibility for  the Academy.  The new Board of Trustees is made up of twenty-four members, three-fourths of whom had to be from New Hampshire but not from New London and three-fourths also had to be Baptists in good standing.