A Brief History of Colby
Chartered in 1813, when Maine was still part of Massachusetts, Colby originally was called the Maine Literary and Theological Institution. It is one of America's oldest colleges. In 1821 the institution was renamed Waterville College and, following a gift from Gardner Colby that saved the institution from collapse during the Civil War, the school was named Colby in his honor.
Following World War I Colby found its downtown campus crowded between the Kennebec River and the repair yards of the Maine Central Railroad. With no room for needed expansion, trustees voted to move to a new site. Despite major setbacks including the Great Depression and World War II, Colby completed the move to Mayflower Hill in 1952. Land was given to the College by the citizens of the city to keep the institution in Waterville. Innovation has been a tradition over Colby's 200-year history. In 1871 Mary Low enrolled as the College's first female student, and Colby gained the distinction of being the first all-male New England college to become coeducational. In 1833 Colby was the first college to organize an anti-slavery society, it participated in the first intercollegiate women's varsity ice hockey game in 1975, and in 1983 it was the first college to issue e-mail accounts to all students. |
