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James Manning (October 22, 1738 – July 29, 1791) was an American Baptist minister, educator and legislator from Providence, Rhode Island best known for being the first president of Brown University and one of its most involved founders. He was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. At the age of 18, he attended the Hopewell Academy in Hopewell, New Jersey under the direction of Reverend Isaac Eaton in preparation for his religious studies. In 1762, he graduated from the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University. At Princeton, Manning studied under president Samuel Finley who served under a board of trustees that declared, "Our idea is to send into the World good Scholars and useful members of Society." One of the 130 graduates Finley sent out during his five-year presidency was, notably, the Rev. James Manning.〔A Princeton Companion http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/finley_samuel.html〕 He married Margaret Stites in the year of his graduation from Princeton and a few weeks after the marriage he was publicly ordained by the Scotch Plains, New Jersey Baptist Church.〔Guild, Reuben Aldridge. The Life and Times of James Manning and the Early History of Brown University. Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1864.〕 ==Brown University Presidency== In 1764, Manning was sent by the Philadelphia Baptist Association to found a college in Rhode Island, the cradle of American Baptists. Along with former Chief Justice of the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations Stephen Hopkins, Samuel Ward, John Brown, Nicholas Brown, Sr., Moses Brown, the Reverend Isaac Backus, the Reverend Samuel Stillman, and the Reverend Hezekiah Smith, Manning was one of the founders of the ''College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations'' (now Brown University) during the British colonial period. The (university charter ) was first drafted by later Yale College president and pastor of the Second Congregational Church in Newport Ezra Stiles, who attempted to give the Congregationalists control of the college. In prior decades, the Congregationalists had long dominated the oversight of Harvard College and Yale College. When the Baptists saw what Stiles had done, the draft was withdrawn and rewritten to give the Baptists control of the new college. As punishment, the Congregationalist seats on the board of trustees were reduced to fewer than those granted to the Anglicans. Stiles was bitter and refused to accept a seat even when it was offered to him. Manning served as Brown's first president from 1765 to 1791. He first ran the university at his parsonage and the Baptist meeting house in Warren, Rhode Island. The University moved to Providence in 1770 and during his tenure built its first buildings on college hill, with the help of the Brown family.〔Among the schools that would centuries later create the Ivy League, when Reverend Manning assumed the Brown presidency, The Reverend Myles Cooper was serving as President of King's College (predecessor of today's Columbia University), The Reverend Edward Holyoke was serving as President of Harvard College, The Reverend William Smith was serving as the first Provost of the College of Philadelphia (predecessor of today's University of Pennsylvania), The Reverend Samuel Finley was serving as President of the College of New Jersey (predecessor of today's Princeton University), and The Reverend Thomas Clap was serving as the first President of Yale College. Dartmouth College and Cornell University had not yet been established.〕 Reverend Manning gave the library of the College its first book, Valentin Schindler's ''Lexicon Pentaglotton Hebraicum, Chaldaicum, Syriacum, Talmudico-Rabbinicum & Arabicum'', which was printed in Hanover, Germany in 1612. In February 1786, prominent Virginian Robert Carter III of the Nomony Hall plantation in Virginia, wrote to President Manning regarding his two sons George and John Tasker Carter who were to be enrolled at the college and board with Manning that: “they () to be Sent from Boston immediately upon their Arrival there to your College in Providence. I beg leave to appoint you their Foster Father intimating that my desire is that both my Said Sons shd. be active Characters in Life ....” Manning presided over Brown's first commencement in 1769, at which time seven students received the degree of Bachelor of Arts and 21 honorary degrees were conferred. During his tenure, 165 men earned degrees from the college including 43 clergymen, 29 lawyers, 19 physicians, 19 teachers, 12 judges, 12 business men, 6 professors, 6 congressmen, 2 college presidents, 2 United States ministers, 1 United States consul, 1 governor, and 1 librarian.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「James Manning (minister)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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