Bowdoin, << BOH duhn, >> College is a private, independent liberal arts college in Brunswick, Maine. Massachusetts Governor Samuel Adams signed an act that established the college as a school for men in 1794. At that time, Maine was part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The college was named for James Bowdoin, a political leader during the Revolutionary War in America (1775-1783). The first classes began in 1802. The college first admitted women to its academic programs in 1971.
Well-known graduates of Bowdoin College include Arctic explorers Donald B. MacMillan and Robert E. Peary, author Nathaniel Hawthorne, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, United States President Franklin Pierce, and Chief Justice of the United States Melville W. Fuller. The journalist and social reformer John B. Russwurm became Bowdoin’s first African American graduate in 1826. Graduates of the college also include George J. Mitchell, who served as U.S. senator from Maine from 1980 to 1995; William S. Cohen, who became U.S. secretary of defense in 1997; and Civil War General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Facilities at Bowdoin College include the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum, and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
The college’s website at https://www.bowdoin.edu/ offers additional information.
