Henry Durant (June 18, 1802 in
Acton, Massachusetts
Acton is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, approximately west-northwest of Boston along Massachusetts Route 2 west of Concord and about southwest of Lowell. The population was 24,021 in April 2020, according to the Unit ...
– January 22, 1875 in
Oakland, California
Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
) was the founding president of the
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...
.
[SF Chronicle, July 25, 2010. "Where to Find Celebrities' Resting Places" by Charlie Wells]
Biography
Durant attended
Phillips Academy and the
Andover Theological Seminary
Andover Theological Seminary (1807–1965) was a Congregationalist seminary founded in 1807 and originally located in Andover, Massachusetts on the campus of Phillips Academy. From 1908 to 1931, it was located at Harvard University in Cambridge. ...
in
Andover, Massachusetts; he then studied for the ministry at
Yale College, from which he graduated in 1827. In 1833 he was ordained pastor of the
Congregational church of
Byfield, Massachusetts. In the same year, he married Mary E. Buffett of
Stanwich, Connecticut.
Career
After serving in the ministry for 16 years, he resigned his pastorate and became headmaster of the Dummer Academy (today known as
The Governor's Academy
The Governor's Academy is an independent school north of Boston located on in the village of Byfield, Massachusetts, United States (town of Newbury), north of Boston. The Academy enrolls approximately 412 students in grades nine through twelve ...
) in Byfield. He held that position from 1849 to 1852.
In 1853, Durant came to California and founded the Contra Costa Academy, as a private school for boys. In 1855, the school was chartered as the
College of California.
The college later disincorporated and merged with the state of California's Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College to create the University of California in 1868. Durant was elected the first president of the University of California on August 16, 1870, and resigned only two years later in order to relinquish the position to a younger man (
Daniel Coit Gilman
Daniel Coit Gilman (; July 6, 1831 – October 13, 1908) was an American educator and academic. Gilman was instrumental in founding the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale College, and subsequently served as the second president of the University ...
). In 1873, the University of California moved to its new
Berkeley campus.
Old age did not keep Durant from being elected the
16th mayor of Oakland, although he only served for three years before dying in office, on January 22, 1875.
See also
*
Hotel Durant
References
Biography at UC Berkeley
1802 births
1875 deaths
Phillips Academy alumni
Leaders of the University of California, Berkeley
Yale Divinity School alumni
University of California regents
University of California, Berkeley
Mayors of Oakland, California
People from Acton, Massachusetts
19th-century American politicians
Yale College alumni
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