I came across a tiny, minor footnote as I researched Yankee Doodle Dunce, an account of allegedly independent nations that joined the United States. This story involved Vermont specifically.
The situation occurred within the confusing, overlapping New York royal decrees and New Hampshire Grants. The turmoil of the American Revolutionary War further compounded the situation. And within all this stood the King’s College Tract.
The Setup
First, let’s start in the present-day Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City at Columbia University (map).
Columbia is an Ivy League institution and one of only nine “colonial colleges” in the United States. That’s a select group tracing their foundation to a date before the American Revolution. Columbia came in sixth on that prestigious list and the first one in New York. It traced all the way back to a royal charter issued by King George II in 1754.
Why does any of that matter? Because Columbia’s original named was King’s College. The tract now located in Vermont had been set aside for its expansion.
Evolution of the Tract
I could not find the exact boundaries of the King’s College Tract. However, many sources mentioned that it covered about 20,000 acres in the vicinity of the current towns of Cambridge and Johnson, Vermont. That would place it east of Lake Champlain and north of a stretch of Interstate 89 from Burlington to Montpelier. It was reserved at the instigation of New York’s then-Lieutenant Governor, Cadwallader Colden (who should get a special award simply for his name). He granted this tract to the trustees of King’s College for an educational institution in 1764.
Colden was a powerful politician who strongly supported a college in New York. He was also part of a group that felt New York City was too unsavory and corrupt for this honor. Instead he favored a rural college far away from urban temptations. But of course he fell on the wrong side of that debate.
However, Colden didn’t give up after his loss. He sold numerous patents to individual New Yorkers under his authority within the disputed area and threw-in land for King’s College to boot. This would bolster New York’s claims while creating an avenue for pushing King’s College out of the city.
Today Columbia has a global presence with centers in Amman, Beijing, Mumbai, Paris, Istanbul, Nairobi, Santiago, and Rio de Janeiro. But it does not maintain a campus in a rural corner of northern Vermont.
So obviously something happened.
The Revolution and the Vermont Republic
Cadwallader Colden found himself on the wrong side of the equation, again. New York’s authority and governance dissipated with the establishment of the Vermont Republic in 1777. Colden probably wasn’t too concerned about it though. He died in 1776.
King’s College, meanwhile, hit difficult times. Loyalists controlled the college upon the outbreak of the revolution, and it suspended operations for several years. People in the new nation were still sensitive to things named after English royalty after the war.
So King’s College had to change its name. It became Columbia College, and later Columbia University. Don’t cry too much for the Loyalists that ran King’s College, though. One member of the college’s board of governors, Charles Inglis, relocated to Nova Scotia and founded a new King’s College in 1789. Today it’s called the University of King’s College with a campus in Halifax (map).
The Final Word
Vermont found a handful friends in the Continental Congress who represented its interests even if it wasn’t officially one of the 13 Original Colonies. William Samuel Johnson of Connecticut, later a signatory of the U.S. Constitution became a particularly reliable supporter. So the Vermont Republic gave him the former King’s College Grant as a gift in 1785. The Town of Johnson, located within the original grant, bears his name as does Johnson State College (since renamed Northern Vermont University – Johnson).
Here’s another interesting turn of events: Johnson’s father, Samuel Johnson was the first president of King’s College in NYC. Also, Samuel himself became president of Columbia College in 1787. Thus, the King’s College Tract retained an odd connection to what later became Columbia University via the Johnson name long after the physical tie had been severed.
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