MANNING, James, American Baptist edu cator, first president of Brown University: b. Elizabeth, N. J., 22 Oct. 1738; d. Providence, R. I., 29 July 1791. He was graduated at Princeton College in 1762, in 1763 became pas tor of a Baptist church at Morristown, N. J., and about a year later pastor of a church in Warren, R. I. There he almost immediately commenced a Latin school, which seems to have been in some sense the germ of Rhode Island College. He had previously proposed to several influential men in his denomination, as sembled at Newport, the organization of "a seminary of polite literature, subject to the gov ernment of the Baptists" and had drawn up a plan for such an institution. In 1764 the legis lature granted them a charter, and in 1765 he was appointed "president and professor of lan guages and other branches of learning, with full power to act in these capacities, at Warren or elsewhere." The college went into opera tion at Warren in 1766, and the first commence ment was held there in 1769, when a class of seven was graduated. In 1770 it was deter
mined to remove the college to Providence, and during the Revolution, when the college edi fice was occupied as a military barrack, and afterward as a hospital, he was actively en gaged in clerical duties and also rendered im portant services to the patriotic cause. In 1783 he resumed his duties at the college, and in 1786 represented Rhode Island in Congress, where he exerted himself to secure the adoption of the national Constitution. From 1770 till the year of his death he was also pastor of the first Baptist church in Providence. He resigned the presidency of the college in 1790. Consult Guild, 'Life and Times of James Manning and the Early History of Brown University' (1894). See BROWN UNIVERSITY.