The Birth of a University

The roots of the University of Georgia go back to 1784, when the Georgia General Assembly set aside 40,000 acres of land in two new counties, Franklin and Washington, for the specific purpose of starting a "college or seminary for learning." The following year, the lawmakers had one. A man named Abraham Baldwin, a tutor from Yale University and later a U.S. Senator, drafted a charter for what was to become Franklin College (indirectly named for Benjamin Franklin). On January 27, 1785, the General Assembly approved the charter. The first seeds were sown.

With the inception of Franklin College, Georgia became the first state in the South to charter a state university. The school grew slowly at first, mostly because Georgia was an agricultural state where planting crops took top priority. After the Civil War, state legislators came to recognize the value of better schools, but attention first had to be directed toward rebuilding Georgia's ravaged economy. Improvements in education would have to wait.

Nevertheless, Franklin College acquired in 1867 the Lumpkin Law School, a private school named for Judge Joseph Lumpkin - a man who, ironically, once turned down the presidency of Franklin College. As the first professional school in the state, Lumpkin Law School proved a valuable addition and added prestige to the college. Soon thereafter the college was renamed the University of Georgia.

While the acquisition of a law school in 1867 was helpful, nothing benefited the university more than a document passed by the Georgia Assembly 10 years later. The Constitution of 1877 gave all money for education (with the exception of the "elementary branches of an English education") to the University of Georgia. The constitution also paved the way for the establishment of four extensions to the university.

These four branches were created over the next 30 years, and people living in Atlanta, Milledgeville, Savannah and Valdosta were given a chance to attend college locally. The names and purposes were diverse, too: the School of Technology (now Georgia Institute of Technology) was founded in Atlanta, 1885; the Georgia Normal and Industrial College for Girls (now Georgia College & State University) was founded in Milledgeville, 1889; the Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youths (now Savannah State University) was founded in Savannah, 1890; and the South Georgia Normal School (now Valdosta State University) was founded in Valdosta, 1906.