The Founding of Duke University

A century ago, Trinity College President William Preston Few dreamed of a major research university in North Carolina.

Inspired by President Few’s vision and confident in his ability to see the project through, James B. Duke decided to create a formal, legal trust that included a transformative gift for Trinity College. On December 11, 1924, the $40 million Duke Endowment was created, naming educational institutions, hospitals, children and families and the rural Methodist Church as its primary beneficiaries. Trinity College would receive a gift of $6 million. Other colleges would also receive ongoing support: Davidson College, Furman University and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte.

Trinity College’s very existence in Durham was largely thanks to the generosity and civic mindedness of Washington Duke, James B. Duke’s father.

In the late 1800s, leaders of Trinity College believed its Randolph County location was too rural to allow the institution to grow. They solicited bids from larger cities; in Durham, city leaders turned to Washington Duke, a local entrepreneur and philanthropist.

Duke had walked home from the Civil War with just 50 cents in his pocket, but by the 1890s his cigarette business – the eventual American Tobacco Company – was booming. Duke led an effort in Durham to match an offer made by the city of Raleigh, adding $50,000 of his own to close the deal.

So in 1892, Trinity College loaded all its belongings – including the college bell, clock, safe, and the several thousand books of its library, onto a railroad car and headed 70 miles east to Durham. It opened there with 17 faculty and 180 students.

Once settled in Durham, Trinity College grew in fits and starts, with the Duke family continuing to underwrite its development. In 1896, for example, with Trinity struggling financially, Washington Duke donated $100,000 on the condition that it “open its doors to women, placing them on equal footing with men.”

That stipulation – a 76-year-old man championing women’s rights – was widely praised and publicized. Duke was offered, and declined, a position as vice president of a national suffrage group.

There is little historical documentation explaining Duke’s reason for this caveat, and in fact, the college had already been open to women – as day students only. But Trinity swiftly then built a women’s dormitory, named for Mary Duke, Washington Duke’s daughter, who died at age 40.

At the same time, the college offered to rename itself after Duke, a thank you for his largesse.

He declined.

“Mr. Duke’s personal characteristics were admirable. There was no pretense about him,” wrote the Raleigh Evening Times on May 8, 1905 in a story announcing Washington Duke’s death. “He was plain Washington Duke, all through life, just as he was when he came out of the war. He was faithful in his friendship, affectionate in his family, and kindly in his bearing towards others. Late in his life he contributed largely of his means to public purposes, but he did not desire any applause for any donation, but formed his sole gratification in the fact that he was doing what he thought was right and proper and not for him to do. Indeed, but few men have ever lived who were less the slave of great wealth than he was. He was glad to amass means but did not care to display his wealth before the public.”