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

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Guilford College
Gwen Gosney Erickson
Guilford College has the distinction of being the only Quaker college
in the southeastern United States. Friends in North Carolina had a
growing concern about the education of their young people in the early
nineteenth century and began exploring the idea of a yearly meeting
school to provide a guarded education and training for Quaker teachers.
New Garden Boarding School developed from this concern and was later
transformed into the institution known today as Guilford College.
Throughout its history, the college has found itself balancing a commitment
to Quaker principles and to maintaining a quality educational institution
in the face of financial and societal challenges.
NORTH CAROLINA QUAKERS
Friends had been in North Carolina since the seventeenth century and
were among the earliest European settlers in the region. Irish Friends’
minister William Edmundson held the first documented religious service
in the colony in 1672, and Quaker founder George Fox also visited. North
Carolina Yearly Meeting held its first sessions in 1698. There is little documentation
of Friends establishing schools during this early period, but
there is evidence that meetings made efforts to ensure education of their
young people.
The mid-eighteenth century brought the establishment of a number of
meetings in the central, or piedmont, region of North Carolina as well as
South Carolina and Georgia. Friends moving from eastern North Carolina,
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