History of Rutgers University

Rutgers University (officially known as Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey) is an institution of higher learning with campuses across the State of New Jersey its main flagship campus in New Brunswick and Piscataway, and two other campuses in the cities of Newark and Camden, New Jersey.

The eighth of nine colleges established during the American colonial period, Rutgers was chartered as Queen's College on 10 November 1766. It was renamed Rutgers College in 1825 after Colonel Henry Rutgers (1745–1830), an American Revolutionary War hero philanthropist and an early benefactor of the school. With the development of graduated education, Rutgers College was renamed Rutgers University in 1924. Originally established as a private institution affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church, it is now a secular institution and became New Jersey's leading state university of New Jersey under legislation passed in 1945 and 1956. At present, Rutgers is unique as the only university in the United States that is a colonial chartered college (1766), a land-grant institution (1864), and a state university (1945/1956).

Shortly after the creation of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) by Presbyterians in 1746, ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church sought to establish autonomy in ecclesiastical affairs. At that time, those who wanted to become ministers within the church had to travel to the Netherlands to be trained and ordained, and many of the affairs of churches in the American colonies were managed from Europe. Thus, the ministers sought to create a governing body known as a classis to give local autonomy to the church in the colonies.

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