As usual all the cold-weather puritans love bragging about their parochial 
institutions. In 1618 the Virginia Company of London gave orders for the 
laying out of grounds for a university at Henrico, of which an Indian School 
was to be a branch, and endowed it with 10,000 acres of land. Henrico was on 
the north side of the James River, 12 miles below the present city of 
Richmond [Virginia].

In 1619, May 26, Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer of the Virginia Company, 
reported that £1,500 had been collected toward the proposed college, 
following authorization of King James I that each bishop in England makes a 
collection in his diocese for the purpose.

In 1619, July 31,The General Assembly of Virginia petitioned the Company to 
send workmen from England for "erecting the University and College."

The Virginia Company was, of course, a private corporation, and envisioned a 
University in the new world  almost two decades before the well-intentioned 
private citizen, Mr. Harvard, decided maybe the black-frocked  Massachusetts 
oligarchs ought to actually support higher education.

Alas, in 1622, the perceptive Native Americans in Powhatan's Confederacy 
realized that these white-eyes were bent on pushing them out, and the 
College (under construction), along with a number of settlers were wiped out 
in the massacre (pre-emptive strike?).

Apparently, ideas don't have much currency, but the idea of a university in 
the New World was well-established before the well-meaning Mr. Harvard 
pushed this through in Massachusetts with a private gift.

Tim T.
400th Anniversary of settlement of the continental United States by 
English-Speaking vandals (but see the establishment of Saint Augustine in 
1565, and Spanish colonization attempts on the Chesapeake Bay, Viking 
settlements in "Vinland", and visits by Portuguese fisherman for the 
previous 900 years, or so. Too bad we don't have DNA for historical claims.