Founded by Friends : the Quaker heritage of fifteen - Scarecrow Press

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Haverford College
Diana Franzusoff Peterson
Haverford, the first Quaker college in the United States, opened as
Haverford School on October 28, 1833. In the three years since its
conception in 1830 by a group of New York and Philadelphia Orthodox
Quakers, the name had already been changed from Friends’ Central
School Association. “Friends” was dropped from the school’s name to
avoid the notion that the college represented all Quakers, after the major
schism within the Society of Friends at the end of the 1820s resulted in Orthodox
and Hicksite branches and a struggle for power and control of collective
assets. In the late 1830s, Haverford further aligned itself with the
Gurneyites, a group associated with the activist teachings of the English
Quaker theologian, Joseph John Gurney.
Haverford’s stated philosophy was to provide a “guarded” and “liberal”
higher education to Quaker boys. The term “liberal” as in “liberal
arts” originally referred to those arts and sciences “worthy of a free man,”
“becoming a gentleman,” and “general intellectual enlargement and refinement.”
Intending to bridge the gap between “guarded” and “liberal”
by providing “literary instruction . . . combined with a religious care over
. . . morals and manners and . . . observance of the testimonies of our religious
society” for their sons, Haverford combined the concepts of useful
secular knowledge with Quaker ethics and doctrine. An examination of
the 1833 curriculum reveals courses in abstract and natural sciences, philosophy,
and classical languages. The daily schedule included Scripture
reading, gymnastics or horticultural labor, classes, exercise, and study.
Sunday study included Scripture and other religious books. There was a
summer term—in other words, the students were at school all year.
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