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

Guilford College 23
Jeremiah Hubbard, teacher and member of New Garden Monthly
Meeting, was the clerk of North Carolina Yearly Meeting from 1830 to
1835. He was a highly respected minister and educator among North Carolina
Friends and a crucial player in the early establishment of the school.
His position in the New Garden community and the presence of his
monthly meeting school there is credited with influencing the placement
of the school at New Garden. However, like so many Friends, Hubbard
left for Indiana before the actual opening of the school in 1837. He continued
to support the effort from a distance and came back to New Garden
to attend yearly meeting sessions following the opening of the school.
Nathan Hunt, born in Guilford County in 1758 and patriarch of
nineteenth-century North Carolina Quakerism, introduced the subject of
education at the 1830 yearly meeting and continued to press for the formation
of a yearly meeting school. He presented his vision for a school
both to Friends in North Carolina Yearly Meeting and among the wider
world of Friends. Before the 1831 yearly meeting sessions, Hunt had traveled
among Friends in the North and believed they would provide
needed assistance. Through his efforts, he was able to raise the substantial
funds necessary for the opening. Although he did not serve on the early
boarding school committees, his sons-in-law—Dougan Clark and Joshua
Stanley—were officially involved in the founding and later served, with
Hunt’s daughters, as superintendents of the school.
It would take several years for the plan to develop into an actual school,
and committees were established to determine the details. Originally, a
group of forty-five was chosen to implement the plan and deliver its report
at the 1832 yearly meeting sessions. A smaller committee made up of
eight men and eight women was then appointed to choose a location. Before
the purchase of land at New Garden, the charter was drafted, and
trustees were appointed.
EARLY OVERSIGHT AND ORTHODOX QUAKER INFLUENCE
The original charter placed all power in the hands of twelve men: Joshua
Stanley, John Beard, Thomas Hodgin, John Russell, Elisha Coffin, Henry
Macy, Zacharias Coffin, Thomas T. Hunt, Jeremiah Pickett, Nixon Henley,
Peter Dicks, and Phineas Nixon Jr. There was no mention of the yearly
meeting or restrictions on the makeup of the trustees. Originally, a committee
of women Friends was appointed in equal number to oversee the
school, but women members were not prominent in the business of the
trustees and, though they met with the board until 1869, were only noted
as present and never listed. Women did not formally serve on the board
until Mary Petty was appointed in 1937.