Background
Henry Durant was born on June 18, 1802 at Acton, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Henry and Lucy (Hunt) Durant.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
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Henry Durant was born on June 18, 1802 at Acton, Massachusetts, United States. He was the son of Henry and Lucy (Hunt) Durant.
Durant prepared for college at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, and graduated from Yale in 1827, in a class numbering among its members Horace Bushnell and Nathaniel Parker Willis.
Following graduation, Durant took charge of the Garrison Forest Academy, Baltimore County, Maryland. He gave up this position at the end of two years in order to accept a Yale tutorship which he held for four years, meanwhile completing the course in the Yale Theological Seminary.
Durant was ordained pastor of the Congregational church in Byfield, Massachusetts, and continued in this work until 1849, when he became head of the Dummer Academy in Byfield. This was at the time of the California gold rush. Among the many who were drawn to the West were a few earnest men who went in the interest of the welfare of their fellows. Henry Durant was one of this number. Awake to the possibilities of aiding in the educational development of the new state, he left his position in the East, and arrived in California on May 1, 1853. At a joint meeting of the Presbytery of San Francisco and the Congregational Association of California held in Nevada City, California, on May 10, a plan was formulated to establish an Academy in Oakland (then known as Contra Costa) under the direction of Durant. A month later the Contra Costa Academy opened, with three pupils, in a former fandango house rented by Durant for $150 per month, payable in gold coin in advance. Durant, however, had come to California with “college on the brain, ” and never for a moment forgot his supreme aim and desire. Consequently it was upon the petition of the Board of Directors of his Academy that the State Board of Education granted a charter to the College of California, April 13, 1855.
By the year 1860 an entering class had been prepared, and the College of California began its first session in July with a freshman class of nine and a faculty of two: Henry Durant and Martin Kellogg. In 1868 the legislature of California provided for the establishment and support of the state University of California, and in the next year all assets of the College of California were turned over to the University.
On August 16, 1870, Henry Durant, now sixty-eight years old, was elected the first president, but he was forced to resign at the end of two years, owing to ill health. Following his recovery, he was twice elected mayor of Oakland and was occupying this office at the time of his death.
He left practically nothing in the way of writings. He made no original contribution to literature, to science, or to any other branch of human knowledge.
(This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)
Durant was essentially a teacher and an organizer.
On December 10, 1833 Durant married Mary E. Buffett, daughter of the Reverend Platt Buffett of Stanwich, Connecticut.