Location: Selwyn Avenue in Charlotte
County: Mecklenburg
Original Date Cast: 1970
The early history of Queens College can be traced to attempts by pioneer settlers to establish a Presbyterian school of Charlotte in 1771. An endorsement by the colonial Assembly authorized the school. However, King George III revoked its charter, doubting the wisdom of creating a Scots-Irish institution that could perpetuate anti-royalist views in the colony. The trustees continued to apply for a charter and operated the school under the name of Queen’s Museum. During the Revolution, school trustees sympathized with the colonial cause and many future leaders, including William R. Davie and Andrew Jackson, were educated there. When independence was declared, the school became known as Liberty Hall Academy. It relocated to Salisbury in 1784.
In 1821 the Male and Female Academy Corporation was chartered to operate two separate institutions to educate men and women. In 1851 sessions for females were suspended due to an epidemic in Charlotte and a fire that destroyed the school building. By 1857, the trustees of Charlotte Female Institute organized a stock company, erected a building on College and Ninth Streets, and recruited Rev. Robert Burwell and his wife to head the Institution. The Burwells ran the Charlotte Female Institute until 1872, when Rev. Burwell left to head Peace Institute.
Elizabeth Long re-organized the school as the Seminary for Girls and kept the institution open during difficult times following Burwell’s departure. In 1896, when the Concord and Mecklenburg Presbyteries chartered the Presbyterian College for Women, the Seminary for Girls merged with Presbyterian College. In 1896, the Concord and Mecklenburg Presbyteries chartered the Presbyterian Female College. The Seminary for Girls merged with the new college and, in 1912, anticipating a move to the present campus in the Myers Park residential area, it became Queens College.
In 1930 Queens affiliated with the Presbyterian Synod of South Carolina through a merger with Chicora College in Columbia. Restructuring of the Presbyterian Church has given Queens ties to both the South Atlantic and the Mid-Atlantic synods. The school became co-educational in 1987 and changed its name again in 2002 to become Queens University of Charlotte in order to reflect the institution’s current curriculum and to distinguish it from other institutions internationally bearing the Queens name.
References:
Mary N. Kratt, Charlotte: Spirit of the New South (1992)
Mary N. Kratt and Thomas W. Hanchett, Legacy: The Myers Park Story (1986)
Mildred Morse McEwen, Queens College Yesterday and Today (1980)
Edwin R. Walker, “The Stuff of Which We are Made,” Queens College Bulletin (September 1956)